‘Mary is so tiresome about these things!’ cried Clara, as their cousin retreated.  ‘Such fidgetting nonsense.’

‘I once argued it with her,’ said Louis, without stirring; ’and she had the right side, that it is often more self-denying to take care of one’s health, than to risk it for mere pleasure or heedlessness.’

‘There’s no dew!’ said Clara; ’and if there was, it would not hurt, and if it did, I should be too glad to catch a cold, or something to keep me at home.  Oh, if I could only get into a nice precarious state of health!’

’You would soon wish yourself at school, or anywhere else, so that you could feel some life in your limbs,’ half sighed Louis.

’I’ve more than enough!  Oh! how my feet ache to run! and my throat feels stifled for want of making a noise, and the hatefulness of always sitting upright, with my shoulders even!  Come, you might pity me a little this one night, Louis:  I know you do, for Jem is always telling me not to let you set me against it.’

‘No, I don’t pity you.  Pity is next akin to contempt.’

‘Nonsense, Louis.  Do be in earnest.’

’I have seldom seen the human being whom I could presume to pity:  certainly not you, bravely resisting folly and temptation, and with so dear and noble a cause for working.’

‘You mean, the hope of helping to maintain grandmamma.’

’Which you will never be able to do, unless you pass through this ordeal, and qualify yourself for skilled labour.’

‘I know that,’ said Clara; ’but the atmosphere there seems to poison, and take the vigour out of all they teach.  Oh, so different from granny teaching me my notes, or Jem teaching me French—­’

‘Growling at you—­’

’He never growled half as much as, I deserved.  I cared to learn of him; but I don’t care for anything now,—­no, not for drawing, which you taught me!  There’s no heart in it!  The whole purpose is to get amazing numbers of marks and pass each other.  All dates and words, and gabble gabble!’

’Ay! there’s an epitome of the whole world:  all ambition, and vanity, and gabble gabble,’ said Louis, sadly.  ’And what is a gosling, that he should complain?’

’You don’t mean that in reality.  You are always merry.

’Some mirth is because one does not always think, Clara; and when one does think deeply enough, there is better cheerfulness.’

‘Deeply enough,’ said Clara.  ’Ah!  I see.  Knowing that the world of gabble is not what we belong to, only a preparation?  Is that it!’

‘It is what I meant.’

‘Ah I but how to make that knowledge help us.’

’There’s the point.  Now and then, I think I see; but then I go off on a wrong tack:  I get a silly fit, and a hopeless one, and lose my clue.  And yet, after all, there is a highway; and wayfaring men, though fools, shall not err therein,’ murmured Louis, as he gazed on the first star of evening.