“Such things puzzle my sisters at Vale Leston.  They are part of the same spirit of independence that sends girls to hospitals or medical schools.”

“Or colleges, or lecturing.  Dolores is wild to lecture, and I see no harm in her trying her wings at the High School on some safe subject, if her father in New Zealand does not object, though I am glad it has not occurred to any of my own girls.”

“Sir Jasper would not like it?”

“Certainly not; but if my brother consents he will not mind it for Dolores.  She is a good girl in the main, but even mine have very different ideals from what we had.”

“Please tell me.  I see it a little, and I have been thinking about it.”

“Well, perhaps you will laugh, but my ideal work was Sunday-schools.”

“Are not they Miss Mohun’s ideal still?”

“Oh yes, infinitely developed, and so they are my cousin Florence’s-— Lady Florence Devereux; but the young ones think them behind the times.  I remember when every girl believed her children the prettiest and cleverest in nature, showed off her Sunday-school as her pride and treasure, and composed small pink books about them, where the catastrophe was either being killed by accident, or going to live in the clergyman’s nursery.  Now, those that teach do so simply as a duty and not a romance.”

“And the difficulty is to find those who will teach,” said Geraldine.  “One thing is, that the children really require better teaching.”

“That is quite true.  My girls show me their preparation work, and I see much that I should not have thought of teaching the Beechcroft children.  But all the excitement of the matter has gone off.”

“I know.  The Vale Leston girls do it as their needful work, not with their hearts and enthusiasm.  I expect an enthusiasm cannot be expected to last above a generation and perhaps a half.”

“Very likely.  A more indifferent thing; you will laugh, but my enthusiasm was for chivalry, Christian chivalry, half symbolic.  History was delightful to me for the search for true knights.  I had lists of them, drawings if possible, but I never could indoctrinate anybody with my affection.  Either history is only a lesson, or they know a great deal too much, and will prove to you that the Cid was a ruffian, and the Black Prince not much better.”

“And are you allowed the ’Idylls of the King’?”

“Under protest, now that the Mouse-trap has adopted Browning for weekly reading and discussion.  Tennyson is almost put on the same shelf with Scott, whom I love better than ever.  Is it progress?”

“Well, I suppose it is, in a way.”

“But is it the right way?”

“That’s what I want to see.”

“Now listen.  When our young men, my brothers-—especially my very dear brother Claude and his contemporaries, Rotherwood is the only one left—-were at Oxford, they got raised into a higher atmosphere, and came home with beautiful plans and hopes for the Church, and drew us up with them; but now the University seems just an ordeal for faith to go through.”