‘Not entirely; though I must say the mingled reverence and curiosity with which they regard the little monster, and their own fear of not bringing up their treasure properly, were a very interesting study.’
‘More so than your snowy peaks! Ah, if the proper study of mankind is man, the proper study of womankind is babe.’
‘Well, it was not at all an unsatisfactory study, in this case. And let me tell you, Miss Birdie, it is no bad thing to be shut in for a few months with a few good books and a couple of thoroughly simple-hearted people, who have thought a good deal in their quiet humdrum way.’
‘Why, Lettice, you must have been quite an education to them!’
‘I hope they were an education to me.’
‘I hope your conscience is not going to be such a rampant and obstructive thing as that which they possess in common,’ said Bertha.
‘I wish it had been,’ said Mrs. Bury gravely.
‘At any rate, the deadly lively time has brisked you all up,’ said Bertha, laughing.
Constance, on her Saturdays and Sundays, looked on with a kind of wonder. She was not exactly of either set. The children were all so young as to look on her as a grown-up person, though willing to let her play with them; and she was outside the group of young married people, and could not enter into their family fun; but this kind of playfulness and merriment was quite a revelation to her. She had never before seen mirth, except, of course, childish and schoolgirl play, that had not in it something that hurt her taste and jarred on her feeling as much as did Ida’s screeching laughter in comparison with the soft ripplings of these young matrons.
Still, little Michael was her chief delight, and