"It would take a long time to explain all that I meant," she said. "Perhaps we shall have a chance of talking it over before I leave. I didn't mean that the girls and boys of to-day have any excuse for being naughty and rebellious. But I sometimes think that as we grown-up people move about so much, and are tempted to grow restless and impatient, so the same influences may affect children to a certain extent, and that a very strict routine may be a little more irksome to them now than it was to us thirty years ago."
"Oh, it is dreadful!—dreadful!" murmured Helen.
"Nonsense! Not dreadful, only perhaps a little tiresome."
Helen's tone had been tragic, but there was a gleam of fun in Cousin Mary's eyes as she replied that brought a smile to the girl's face.
"Very tiresome," she said. "I hate lessons."
"They are a little wee bit trying sometimes, I grant. And yet we must learn them; must go on learning them all our lives."
Cousin Mary's face had grown grave again, and Helen began to think her the most perplexing person that she had ever met.
"Go on learning!" she repeated. "Grown-up people don't learn lessons."
"Not book lessons exactly, though I think I have learnt more book lessons even since I have been grown up than I did in the school-room. But that is a matter of choice. There are certain lessons that we must learn, because God goes on teaching them to us until we really know them."
"Oh! What are they?" asked Helen in an awe-struck whisper.