‘About what?’

’About—­ Please don’t take it ill of me, but it troubles me, Hazel.  About this sort of life you are leading.’

‘This sort of life?’ Hazel repeated, thinking over some of the days last past.  ‘Much you know about it!’

‘I do not suppose I do.  I cannot know much about it,’ said Primrose meekly.  ’All my way of life has been so different.  But do you think, Hazel, really, that there is not something better to do with one’s self than what all these gay people do?’

’I think you are a great deal better than I am—­if that will content you.’

‘Why should it content me?’ said Primrose, laughing a little.  ’I do not see anything pleasant in it, even supposing it were true.’

‘There is some use in training you,’ Hazel went on; ’but no amount of pruning would ever bring me into shape.’  And with that, somehow, there came up the thought of a little sketch, wherein her hat swung gayly from the top of a rough hazel bush; and with the thought a pain so keen, that for the moment her head went down upon her hands on the window-sill.

Primrose was silent a few moments, not knowing just how to speak.

‘But Hazel,’ she began, slowly—­’all these gay people you are so much with, they live just for the pleasure of the minute; and when the pleasure of the minute is over, what remains?  I cannot bear to have you forget that, and become like them.’

‘Like them?’ said Hazel.  ‘Am I growing like Kitty Fisher?’

‘No, no, no!’ cried Primrose.  ’You are not a bit like her, not a bit.  I do not mean that; but I mean, dear,—­aren’t you just living for the moment’s pleasure, and forgetting something better?’

‘Forgetting a good many things, you think.’

‘Aren’t you, Hazel?  And I cannot bear to have you.’

‘What am I to remember?’ said the girl in a sort of dreamy tone, with her thoughts on the wing.

’Remember that you have something to do with your life and with yourself, Hazel; something truly noble and happy and worth while.  I am sure dancing-parties are not enough to live on.  Are they?’

‘No.’

Perhaps Primrose thought she had said enough; perhaps she did not know how to choose further words to hit the girl’s mood.  She was patiently silent.  Suddenly Hazel sat up and turned towards her.

‘You poor little Prim!’ she said, laying gentle hands on her shoulders and a kiss on each cheek,—­’whirled off from your green leaves on a midnight chase after witches!  This was one of Mr. Rollo’s few mistakes:  he should have come alone.’

‘Should he?’ said Primrose, wondering.  ’But it wouldn’t have been so good for you, dear, would it?’

’Prim’—­somewhat irrelevantly—­’did you ever have a thorn in your finger?’

‘What do you mean?’ Primrose answered in just bewilderment.

‘Well I have two in mine.’  And Miss Kennedy went back to the window and her world of moonlight.  She did not wonder that the Indians reckoned their time by ‘moons;’ she was beginning to check off her own existence in the same way.  In one moon she had walked home from Merricksdale, in another driven back from Mrs. Seaton’s; and now in this—­But then her head went down upon the window-sill once more, nor was lifted again until the carriage was before the steps of Chickaree.