Clemence stared again, more rapt than ever.
“Lancelot, perhaps,” she opined, “or Sigismund. Everard’s nice too, or Ronald or Guy—”
“Bah! Sugary. I couldn’t! Daniel is ugly,” Darsie admitted, “but it’s strong. Dan Vernon will fight lions like the Bible one; they’ll roar about him, and his enemies will cast him in, but they’ll not manage to kill him. He’ll trample them under foot, and leave them behind, like milestones on the road.” Darsie was nothing if not inaccurate, but in the bosom of one’s own family romantic flights are not allowed to atone for discrepancies, and the elder sister was quick to correct.
“Daniel didn’t fight the lions! What’s the use of being high falutin’ and making similes that aren’t correct?”
“Dear Clemence, you are so literal!” Darsie tilted her head with an air of superiority which reduced the elder to silence, the while she cogitated painfully why such a charge should be cast as a reproach. To be literal was to be correct. Daniel had not fought the lions! Darsie had muddled up the fact in her usual scatterbrain fashion, and by good right should have deplored her error. Darsie, however, was seldom known to do anything so dull; she preferred by a nimble change of front to put others in the wrong, and keep the honours to herself. Now, after a momentary pause, she skimmed lightly on to another phase of the subject. “What should you say was the character and life history of a woman who could call her eldest child ‘Daniel,’ the second ‘Viola Imogen,’ and the third and fourth ‘Hannah’ and ‘John’?”
Clemence had no inspiration on the subject. She said: “Don’t be silly!” sharply, and left it to Lavender to supply the necessary stimulus.
“Tell us, Darsie, tell us! You make it up—”
“My dear, it is evident to the meanest intellect. She was the child of a simple country household, who, on her marriage, went to live in a town; and when her first-born son was born, she pined to have him christened by her father’s name in the grey old church beneath the ivy tower; so they travelled there, and the white-haired sire held the infant at the font, while the tears furrowed his aged cheeks. But—by slow degrees the insidious effects of the great capital invaded the mind of the sweet young wife, and the simple tastes of her girlhood turned to vanity, so that when the second babe was born, and her husband wished to call her Hannah after her sainted grandmother, she wept, and made an awful fuss, and would not be consoled until he gave in to Viola Imogen, and a christening cloak trimmed with plush. And she was christened in a city church, and the organ pealed, and the godmothers wore rich array, and the poor old father stayed at home and had a slice of christening cake sent by the post. But the years passed on. Saddened and sobered by the discipline of life, aged and worn, her thoughts turned once more to her quiet youth, and when at last a third child—”
“There’s only two years between them!”
Darsie frowned, but continued her narrative in a heightened voice—