"Ah, Miss Urquhart," she said, laughing. "It is the young people who teach us in the present day. They are so wise, so full of enthusiasm, so intense in what they feel and hope for. When I listen to my girl, it reminds me of my hot-headed youth, and I pray she may not be awakened so quickly as I was."
Gavine looked at her mother.
"How were you awakened?" she asked gravely.
"My dear child. You will know how later on. Life has hardly touched you yet. You are only on the threshold."
"You talk as if you were Methuselah!" said Austin. "How can you be so absurd?"
"Am I absurd!"
Mrs. Norman lowered her voice and turned her head away from Sidney and her daughter. "My dear boy, Gavine makes me feel a frivolous doll; she is the essence of lead. Her heaviness and stolid matter-of-fact sense have a most depressing effect upon me. I feel bound with chains when she is in the room. And when we go about together, I have the awful desire to shock her. Isn't it dreadful of me? For she's such a good earnest girl, and her good worthy aunts are so much more to her than her own mother is. She is never happy till she gets away from me. And I assure you she would be scandalised if she saw me tumbling about on the ice to-morrow. She thinks I ought to be dressed up in a lace cap and spectacles and sit over the fire knitting shawls for the poor. That is her ideal mother!"
Austin laughed. He could not help it; but he felt a little uncomfortable. Gavine's good looks impressed him. He was inclined to talk to her, and when presently her laugh rang out at one of Sidney's speeches, he moved across the room and joined them.
"What is the joke?"
"I was only describing some of our characters here," said Sidney, and then she rose to go.