“Hear, hear!” assented Algitha.
“Unpleasant facts being a foregone conclusion,” Hadria added, “the point to aim at obviously is interesting facts—and plenty of them.”
Ernest flicked a pebble off the parapet of the balustrade of the little temple, and watched it fall, with a silent splash, into the river.
“I never met girls before, who wanted to come out of their cotton-wool,” he observed. “I thought girls loved cotton-wool. They always seem to.”
“Girls seem an astonishing number of things that they are not,” said Hadria, “especially to men. A poor benighted man might as well try to get on to confidential terms with the Sphinx, as to learn the real thoughts and wishes of a girl.”
“You two are exceptional, you see,” said Ernest.
“Oh, everybody’s exceptional, if you only knew it!” exclaimed his sister. “Girls;” she went on to assert, “are stuffed with certain stereotyped sentiments from their infancy, and when that painful process is completed, intelligent philosophers come and smile upon the victims, and point to them as proofs of the intentions of Nature regarding our sex, admirable examples of the unvarying instincts of the feminine creature. In fact,” Hadria added with a laugh, “it’s as if the trainer of that troop of performing poodles that we saw, the other day, at Ballochcoil, were to assure the spectators that the amiable animals were inspired, from birth, by a heaven-implanted yearning to jump through hoops, and walk about on their hind legs——”
“But there are such things as natural instincts,” said Ernest.
“There are such things as acquired tricks,” returned Hadria.
A loud shout, accompanied by the barking of several dogs, announced the approach of the two younger boys. Boys and dogs had been taking their morning bath in the river.