"Of course Hertha means Ida, and you want us all to be Hildegardes, but who is Huberta?"
"Mittie Dupong, of course!" answered Allison. "And Flynn Willis and Cad Bailey and all that set we were so disgusted with at Carter Brown's party. Didn't you mean them, mother?"
"Yes," said Mrs. Walton, well pleased that the tale had been interpreted so quickly. "I must confess that I told the story solely for the moral I wanted to tack on to the end of it. You do not know how my heart has ached for Ida. Poor misguided child! From what I have heard of her aunt I think she must be like Hertha's father, and made Ida feel that she had no sympathy with her childish love-affairs. Then Ida made the mistake that Hertha did, wove her ideals in secret, and fitted them on the first boy who pleased her fancy. Once wrapped in them she was blind to all his faults, and could not judge him as other people did. She made a hero of him. I blame her aunt as much as I do her, because she did not teach her long ago, as Hildgardmar did his daughter.
"Little girls begin very early sometimes to dream about that far-away land of Romance. The teasing questions older people ask them often set them to thinking seriously of it. They call their little playmates their sweethearts, and imagine the admiration and fondness they have for them is the love that is written in the stars. Nobody explains to them that they will outgrow their early ideals as they do their dresses.
"I can remember how my ideals used to change. When I was a little girl, about as old as Elise, I thought that my Prince Charming would be like the one in the story of the Sleeping Beauty. I dreamed of sitting all day beside him on a crystal throne, with a crown on my head and a sceptre in my hand. But as I grew older I realized how stupid that would be, and I fashioned him after the figures that flitted across my mirror in the world of books. He was as handsome as a Greek god, and the feats he performed could have been possible only in the days of the Round Table.
"Then I outgrew that ideal. Others took its place, but when a woman grown, I held up the one that was the best my woman's heart could fashion, I found that my prince measured just to the stature of an honest man, simple and earnest and true. That was all—no Greek god, no dashing knight, but a strong, manly man, whose love was my life's crown of happiness."
She glanced up at the portrait over the mantel, and there was an impressive pause. Lloyd broke the silence presently, speaking very fast in an embarrassed sort of way.
"But, Mrs. Walton, don't you think there was some excuse for Ida besides her being blinded to Mistah Bannon's faults? He made her believe she had such a good influence ovah him that she thought it was her duty to disobey her aunt, because it was moah important that he should be reformed than that she should be obeyed in a mattah that seemed unreasonable to Ida."
"Yes," was the hesitating answer. "But Ida was largely influenced to take that stand by the books she had been reading. That's another matter I want to speak about, since my little girls have confessed to the reading of 'Daisy Dale' and the 'Heiress of Dorn.' While there is nothing particularly objectionable in such books in one way, in another their influence is of the very worst. The characters are either unreal or overdrawn, or they are so interestingly coloured that they are like the figures of the shepherd lad and the long-haired page in the mirrors of Hertha and Huberta. In watching them a girl is apt to weave her web 'to fit their unworthy shoulders, and forget how high is the stature of a perfect prince.' Such books are poor yardsticks, and give one false ideas of value and measurement.
"Ned's plea is what nearly every wild young fellow makes, and nine times out of ten it appeals to a girl more than any other argument he could use. 'Give me the mantle, Hildegarde. It will help me to live right.' So she takes him in hand to reform him. Nothing could be purer and higher than the motives which prompt her to sacrifice everything to what she considers her duty. I had a schoolmate once who married a bright young fellow because he came to her with Ned's plea. Her father said, 'Let him reform first. What he will not do for a sweetheart, he will never do for a wife.' But she would not listen, and to-day she is living in abject poverty and cruel unhappiness. He is rarely sober.