"But you would have grown mighty impatient of all that after a while."
"Very likely indeed. And yet I doubt it; for never being in earnest myself, I admire it in others," she said.
"Never in earnest and never of one mind! 'Tis a poor character, and I'd not like to hear anybody give it to you but yourself, Honor."
"With two minds you get light and shade into life—shade at any rate. If I hadn't been—but you'll grow as weary of that as I am. Yet a woman's days are so drab if she never changes her mind—all cut and dried and dead. Why, every morning I open my eyes and hope I shall get a new idea. I love my ideas to jostle about and fight and shift and change and dance, like colours in a cloud. I like to find myself helpless, shaken, bewildered, clutching at straws. You don't understand that, Uncle Mark. Ideas are the beautiful, budding flowers of one's thoughts."
"And fixed opinions the roots—or should be. What's the value of poor blossoms 'pon the top of a tree when the storm comes an' puny petals are sent flying down wind? You talk foolishness, and you know 'tis foolishness. Done to vex me, I could almost think. 'Tis your ideas that make you miserable now. A feather in a gale is a stable thing beside you, Honor. You must turn to books if only to please me."
She promised to do so presently, but did not keep her promise; and thus, to little purpose, oftentimes they talked. Then a circumstance quite unexpected made Honor think less of her ill fate and start into new and lively touch with her existence. After long intervals it chanced that some intelligence both of Yeoland and Stapledon reached Bear Down on the same morning; and Doctor Clack it was who brought news of his friend; while information concerning Myles came more directly from himself.
Doctor Clack dismounted with some parade, and made his announcement before Honor and her uncle. That he might perchance move the girl to emotion troubled him but little, for the physician was a staunch partisan, and held that Christopher had been very badly treated.
"A communication from the wanderer," said he. "Yeoland was leaving Sydney for his kinsman's up-country place when he wrote six weeks ago. All is well with him—at least so he declares, and—what do you think? He desires me to join him. Such a romantic notion!"
"Well?"
"Well, Mr. Endicott, positively I don't see why I should not. Little Silver without Christopher is, frankly, a howling wilderness from my point of view—a mere solitary tomb. And nobody ever ill—nobody ailing—no opportunities. When folk do succumb it means the end of them and the inevitable dose of churchyard mould—that final prescription none can escape."