Mrs Gray shook her head.
“Really, my dear, people never know. We are well to-day, and ill to-morrow: it is a strange world.”
The proposition in this case being very abstract no one controverted it.
“When I see,” continued Mrs Gray, oratorically, “young people going out on the world with such false notions as most of them have, poor things, it grieves me, Mrs Buchanan. So little as there is to enjoy after all, even if they get all they expect.”
Mrs Buchanan, like Mr Oswald, had an old-fashioned prejudice that there was something orthodox in all this; a prejudice which made her diffident of answering.
“Poor things!” she echoed, with a slight falter; “but after all, Mrs Gray, we had light hearts in our own youth, and why should we discourage them? Sorrow aye comes soon enough.”
A sigh from Lilias sounded like an assent: and the Lily of Mossgray indeed bent her weary head and assented. She began to believe that sorrow—nothing but sorrow—was the common lot.
But Helen’s face was flushing—her small head growing erect. Mrs Gray turned round—she was no coward—to face her vowed antagonist.
“Miss Buchanan, my dear, I am speaking the truth. People say that the happiest part of life is youth; now just look at yourself. Toiling and labouring with these children; wearied with them every night, but just having to begin again every morning! with little time to yourself—to visit your friends, or read, or whatever you might choose. My dear, just look at it yourself. What have you to enjoy?”
Helen started.