Just as that day had turned rosy at the close and then white with the lesser light of night, so did the summer now fade away in a blaze of colour, giving one last display of what life could do before leaving the land to the shroud of the winter's snow. Cool bracing winds, of which there had already been foretaste, now swept the land. The sun seemed brighter because the air was clearer. The college boys had returned, and were heard daily shouting at their games. A few days made all this outward difference. No other difference had as yet come about.
Now that harvest was over and Captain Rexford was more at leisure, Sophia felt that she must no longer postpone the disagreeable duty of speaking to him seriously about his younger daughters. She chose an hour on Sunday when he and she were walking together to a distant point on the farm. She told the story of the flirtation of poor little Blue and Red slightly, for she felt that to slight it as much as possible was to put it in its true proportion.
"Yes," said Captain Rexford. He took off his hat and brushed back his hair nervously. He had many difficulties in his life. "Yes, and then there is Winifred."
"Girls here are not kept always under the eye of older people, as is usually considered necessary in England; but then they learn from their infancy to be more self-reliant. We have taken the safeguards of governess and schoolroom suddenly from children almost grown-up, and set them where no one has had time to look after them. They would need to have been miraculously wise if, with time on their hands, they had not spent some of it absurdly."
"Yes," he said again unhappily, "what must we do about it, my dear? Your hands are already full." He always leaned on Sophia.
"I fear there is only one thing to do. We cannot give them society; we cannot give them further education; they must have the poor woman's protection—work—to take up their time and thoughts. We have saved them from hard work until now, and it has not been true kindness."
He did not answer. He believed what she said, but the truth was very disagreeable to him. When he spoke again he had left that subject.
"I am sorry for this affair about the Trenholmes. I like Trenholme, and, of course, he has shown himself able to rise. The younger fellow is plain and bluff, like enough to what he is."
"His manners are perfectly simple, but I—I certainly never imagined—"
"Oh, certainly not; otherwise, you would hardly have received him as you did. For us men, of course, in this country—" He gave a dignified wave of his hand.