'I wish we could have a sitting-room each,' said Clare; 'we get so in each other's way.'
'You can share the study with me when you want to be quiet,' said Gwen. 'I won't have you there if you talk!'
'You're quite the owner of it already, then? And what are you going to do, Elfie?'
'Oh, I shall be everywhere. Agatha never minds my music. I shall be practising a good deal, and if I'm voted a bore, I shall take my violin up to the bedroom. You and Gwen are the blue stockings, so the study will be given over to you.'
This seemed satisfactory. Gwen was a great reader, and possessed already a most valuable library. She wrote essays for some periodical occasionally, but would never bind herself to any steady contributions, and she was never so happy as when deeply engrossed in some ancient histories of Egypt or Nineveh. The buried past had a fascination for her, and perhaps she of all the others had most reason for regretting the departure from London, for her constant visits to the reading-room at the British Museum had been a keen delight and pleasure to her. When quite a schoolgirl she used to say, with that masterful toss of her head, 'I am quite determined that I will understand and master every "ology" under the sun!'
And Gwen and her 'ologies' had been a perpetual joke in her family ever since. She had dabbled in a good many sciences—geology, astronomy, architecture, physiology, botany, natural history, and archaeology all had their turn, and she certainly seemed to get a good deal of interest and amusement out of them all. She announced to Clare, as a little later they were seated on the study floor surrounded by pyramids of books, that she intended to give her thoughts now to gardening and agriculture.
'I have some delightful old books on horticulture, which I shall read up,' she said enthusiastically; 'and there is an old Dutch writer amongst them who gives the most minute directions for laying out a flower and vegetable garden. I have told Agatha I shall take the garden into my charge. I am certain I shall succeed with it.'
'Do you ever doubt your capability for doing anything?'
Clare put the question gravely.
'No, I don't think I do, except teach a Sunday school class!' said Gwen, laughing.