‘But then,’ said Mysie, they got wicked.’
‘And then after the Flood it had all to be begun over again,’ said Ivinghoe. ‘Let me see, Methuselah lived about as long as from William the Conqueror till now. I think he might have got to steam and electricity.’
‘And dynamite,’ said Gillian. ‘Oh, I don’t wonder they had to be swept away, if they were clever and wicked both!’
‘And I suppose they were,’ said Jasper. ‘At least the giants, and that they handed on some of their ability through Ham, to the Egyptians, and all those queer primeval coons, whose works we are digging up.’
‘From the Conquest till now,’ repeated Gillian. ‘I’m glad we don’t live so long now. It tires one to think of it.’
‘But we shall,’ said Fly.
‘Yes,’ said Mysie, ‘but then we shall be rid of this nasty old self that is always getting wrong.’
‘That little lady’s nasty old self does so as little as any one’s,’ Jasper could not help remarking to his sister; and Fly, pouncing on the first purple orchis spike amid its black-spotted leaves, cried—
‘At any rate, these dear things go on the same, without any tiresome inventing.’
‘Except God’s just at first,’ whispered Mysie.