“You will be quoting Tolstoi to me next, Aunt Barbara. I suspect that such sages would interrupt a good deal more than dramas.”
“I hope that you care for Tolstoi, Gavan,” said Miss Barbara, not forgetful of his boyish pieties. “Not the novels,—they are very, very sad, and so long, and the characters have such a number of names it is most confusing,—but the dear little books on religion. It is all there: love of all men, and non-resistance of evil, and self-renunciation.”
“Yes,” Gavan assented, while Eppie looked rather gravely at him.
“How beautiful this world would be if we could see it so—no hatred, no strife, no evil.”
Again Gavan assented with, “None.”
“None; and no life either,” Eppie finished for them.
She rose, thrusting her hands into alternate pockets looking for a note-book, which she found and consulted. “I’m off for the fray, Uncle Nigel, for hatred and strife. You and Gavan are going to shoot, so I’ll bring you your lunch at the corner of the Carlowrie woods.”
“So that you and Gavan may continue your quarrel there. Very well. I prefer listening.”
“Gavan understands that Eppie must not be taken seriously,” Miss Barbara interposed; but Eppie rejoined, drawing on her gloves, “Indeed, I intend to be taken seriously. I quarrel with people I like as well as with those I hate.”
“You are going to be a factor in my development, too?” said Gavan.