"I don't think Dame Trevel would like to be called a child," said Alice, with an amused laugh.
"My dear, the majority of human beings are children. The longer I live, the more I see that. I am a child myself in many ways, although, as Eberstein is widening my limitations, I am beginning to grow up. Children," Montrose spoke half to himself and half to his companion, "what else? Instead of cake and toys, we want gold and lands, and power and pleasure. Whether we deserve them or not we clamour for them, just like a child. We become cross when things don't go as we wish them, and slap the bad naughty table that has hurt baby in the shape of anything which impedes our getting what we desire. Good Lord, how can any man be angry with another man, when he knows that his enemy is but a child? But to know that one must be more than a child oneself."
"Do you call me a child?" asked Alice, pouting.
At the very door of Dame Trevel's cottage Montrose bent to kiss her. "A very charming child, who shall never be put into the corner by me."
"You talk as though you were the only wise man in existence."
"Yes!" assented Montrose, laughing. "I speak as though I were the judge of the earth instead of being a denizen. La Rochefoucauld says that. Go in, Alice, and let us get our interview over. We haven't overmuch time."
Mrs. Trevel received her visitors in a clean little room, poorly furnished but fairly comfortable. She was a gaunt old creature, London born and London bred, so she did not speak in the Cornish way. But indeed, thanks to the authority of school-boards, the local dialects are fast disappearing, and the girl idly remembered at the moment how ordinary was the wording of Rose Penwin and her fisherman-lover. The sight of Dame Trevel seated in her big chair suggested the names, as the absence of the West Country shibboleth in her speech suggested the thought of the younger generation whose dialect had been, so to speak, wiped out. The old woman was glad, as usual, to see her nursling and highly approved of the handsome young man who was to marry her, as all Polwellin knew by this time.
"I hope it will be all sunshine with you two," said Mrs. Trevel, when her visitors were seated. "And that you'll live to see your children's children playing about your knees, my dears."
"With Alice beside me it is bound to be sunshine," replied Douglas heartily. "She is an angel."
"Ah, my young sir, men always call women so before marriage; but what do they call them afterwards?"