“No, no, child; we drew you forward,” said Father, kindly. He gets over his tempers in a moment, and he seemed to have quite forgotten the passage at arms with my Aunt Kezia.
“Still, I do not quite understand,” said Sir Robert, not at all unkindly. “Who is the injured creature in this case, Miss Drummond?”
Flora’s colour rose again. “The hare, Sir,” she said.
“The hare!” cried Mr Bagnall, leaning back in his chair to laugh. “Well, Miss Flora, you are quixotic.”
“May I quote my father, Sir?” was her reply. “He says that Don Quixote (supposing him a real person, which I take it he was not) was one of the noblest men the world ever saw, only the world was not ready for him.”
“The world not ready for him? No, I should think not!” laughed Father. “Not just yet, my little lady-errant.”
Flora smiled quietly. “Perhaps it will be, some day. Uncle Courtenay,” she said.
“When the larks fall from the sky—eh, Miss Flora?” said Mr Bagnall, rubbing his hands again in that odious way he has.
“When ‘they shall not hurt nor destroy in all My holy mountain,’” was Flora’s soft answer.
“Surely you don’t suppose that literal?” replied Mr Bagnall, laughing. “Why, you must be as bad—I had nearly said as mad—as my next neighbour, Everard Murthwaite (of Holme Cultram, you know,” he explained aside to Father). “Why, he has actually got a notion that the Jews are to be restored to Palestine! Whoever heard of such a mad idea? Only think—the Jews!”