“Oh, no, father, the sweet-brier has been ordered,” returned Algitha, without her usual brightness of manner.
“Have you a headache?” enquired Mrs. Fullerton. “I hope you have not all been sitting up talking in Hadria’s room, as you are too fond of doing. You have the whole day in which to express your ideas, and I think you might let the remainder wait over till morning.”
“We were rather late last night,” Algitha confessed.
“Pressure of ideas overpowering,” added Fred.
“When I was young, ideas would never have been tolerated in young people for a moment,” said Mrs. Fullerton, “it would have been considered a mark of ill-breeding. You may think yourselves lucky to be born at this end of the century, instead of the other.”
“Indeed we do!” exclaimed Ernest. “It’s getting jolly interesting!”
“In some respects, no doubt we have advanced,” observed his mother, “but I confess I don’t understand all your modern notions. Everybody seems to be getting discontented. The poor want to be rich, and the rich want to be millionaires; men want to do their master’s work, and women want to do men’s; everything is topsy-turvy!”
“The question is: What constitutes being right side up?” said Ernest. “One can’t exactly say what is topsy-turvy till one knows that.”
“When I was young we thought we did know,” said Mrs. Fullerton, “but no doubt we are old-fashioned.”
When luncheon was over, Mr. Fullerton went to the garden with his family, according to a time-honoured custom. His love of flowers sometimes made Hadria wonder whether her father also had been born with certain instincts, which the accidents of life had stifled or failed to develop. Terrible was the tyranny of circumstance! What had Emerson been dreaming of?