“Nonsense!” cried Algitha, who had no sympathy with these passionate discouragements that alternated, in Hadria, with equally passionate exaltations.
“When you have gone, I will ask Mrs. Gordon to teach me the spirit of acquiescence, and one of those distracting games—bésique or halma, or some of the other infernal pastimes that heaven decrees for recalcitrant spirits in need of crushing discipline.”
“I think I see you!” Algitha exclaimed with a dispirited laugh.
“It will be a trial,” Hadria admitted; “but it is said that suffering strengthens the character. You may look forward before long, to claiming as sister a creature of iron purpose.”
“I wonder, I wonder,” cried Algitha, bending her fine head; “we owe everything to her.”
“I know we do. It’s of no use disguising the unpleasant side of the matter. A mother disappointed in her children must be a desperately unhappy woman. She has nothing left; for has she not resigned everything for them? But is sacrifice for ever to follow on sacrifice? Is life to go rolling after life, like the cheeses that the idiot in the fable sent running downhill, the one to fetch the other back?”
“Yes, for ever,” said Algitha, “until a few dare to break through the tradition, and then everyone will wonder at its folly. If only I could talk the matter over, in a friendly spirit, with mother, but she won’t let me. Ah! if it were not that one is born with feelings and energies and ambitions of one’s own, parents might treat one as a showman treats his marionettes, and we should all be charmed to lie prone on our backs, or to dance as may be convenient to our creators. But, as it is, the life of a marionette—however affectionate the wire-pullers—does become monotonous after a time.”
“As to that,” said the younger sister, with a little raising of the brows, as if half shrinking from what she meant to say, “I think most parents regard their children with such favourable eyes, not so much because they are they as because they are theirs.”
The sisters paced the length of the garden without speaking. Then Hadria came to a standstill at the sun-dial, at the crossing of the paths, and began absently to trace the figures of the hours, with the stalk of a rose.
“After all,” she said, “parents are presumably not actuated by humanitarian motives in bringing one into this wild world. They don’t even profess to have felt an unselfish desire to see one enjoying oneself at their expense (though, as a matter of fact, what enjoyment one has generally is at their expense). People are always enthusiastically congratulated on the arrival of a new child, though it be the fourteenth, and the income two hundred a year! This seems to point to a pronounced taste for new children, regardless of the consequences!”