The girl’s face grew radiant. “Oh, you’re an angel!” she cried. “What should I do without you? Speak to him soon, Miss Page!” she implored. “I can’t bear it any longer. I really can’t. I get on so badly with father now, and with mother too. I can’t help it. I know I’ve got an awful temper, but they irritate me so, and——”
Anne sat down beside her on the sofa. “I will speak to your father,” she repeated. “But, my dear, I know it’s a hard, perhaps almost an impossible thing to ask you, but try to see your parents’ point of view as well as your own. They have one, you know,” she added, smiling. “One that belongs to their age and the traditions of their education. To them, though you don’t believe it, their standpoint is as important as yours to you.”
“But you think mine is right?” demanded Sylvia, breathlessly.
Miss Page laughed. “For you, yes. But I’m sorry for your people.”
“I believe you’re sorry for every one,” said Sylvia, after a pause.
“There’s a tendency to get sorrier for most people as one gets older, I admit. You must bear with me, Sylvia.”
The girl flushed. “Now you’re laughing at me,” she said.
“No. Only remembering how I felt at your age, and being very sorry for you too.”
“Ought I to see every one’s point of view as you do?”
“You couldn’t. It’s not to be expected of you. And after all, it’s right that you shouldn’t. It’s the young who make history, and history is made by seeing one thing at a time to the exclusion of every other consideration. It’s only in the autumn of life that one has time to be sorry. But still my dear, you can be kind even without comprehension. Remember the immortal remark that our parents are fellow-creatures after all.”