'It is the getting up at four o'clock in the morning that seems to me the worst part,' said Miss Dare.
'The monotony,' said St. Clare, 'must be terrible; always the same faces, never seeing anything new, knowing that you will never see anything else.'
Agnes listened to these objections eagerly. 'The nuns are not sad at all,' she said. 'If you saw them playing at ball in the garden you would see that they were quite as happy as those who live in the world. I don't know if you are sad in the world; I don't know the world, but I can assure you that there is no sadness in the convent.'
Agnes paused and looked round. Every one was listening, and it was with difficulty she was induced to speak again…. Then in answer to her mother's questions, she said:
'We have our occupations and our interests. They would seem trivial enough to you, but they interest us and we are happy.'
'There must be,' said Lilian, 'satisfaction in having something definite to do, to know where you are going and what you are striving for. We don't know what we are striving for or where we are going. And the trouble we give ourselves! Say what you will, it is something to be spared all that.'
'Yet if we asked the ordinary man,' said Harding, 'what he'd do if he had ten thousand a year, he would answer that he would do nothing. But he may not. The only man who does nothing is the man who suddenly acquires ten thousand a year; he tries to live on his income; he doesn't, he dies of it.'
'And those who are born rich?' asked Moulton.
'They work hard enough, and their work is the hardest of all, their work is amusement. For by some strange misunderstanding all the most tedious and unsatisfactory means of distraction, are termed amusement, betting, gambling, travelling, dinner-parties, love-making. Whereas the valid and sufficient form of distraction, earning your livelihood by the sweat of your brow, is designated by the unpleasant word Labour.'
'But if you are fortunate in love, you're happy,' said old Lady
Castlerich, 'I think I have made my lovers happy.'