"Ah, but that's when the pretty things are finished and done," cried Constance, dropping her work and leaning forward with fire in her eyes. "How about when they are being shaped? There are hammers there then, and fires, too, and they are battered into their beautiful shapes with cruel blows. My word, Patricia Kendall, can't you see it? It takes plenty of hammering and burning before it gets to the cotton-wool stage."
Patricia caught her earnestness. "The trees and flowers and skies aren't hammered into shape," she argued, with half a vision of what Constance meant.
"They are the result of hammering, perhaps," returned Constance quickly, "but that doesn't matter so much. They're the works of God, and that sort of thing can just grow, like a lovely disposition, but the things of earth have to be made into shape with rough hands. Look at the people you know. How many of the selfish, pampered ones amount to a row of pins? Can you honestly say that you know anyone who hasn't been the better for a little hammering?"
Patricia thought swiftly of Doris Leighton, of Mrs. Nat, and she shook her head.
"That's all that's the matter with the Fair Rosamond," Constance explained. "She's been in cotton-wool all her life, and it's going to rob her of her chance to give something to the world——"
She broke off abruptly, seeming to be much moved, and, rising with a disturbed air, walked up and down for a few minutes while Patricia tried to go on with her own darning as though nothing unusual had happened.
Constance dropped into her chair with a low laugh. "Don't mind my preaching, Miss Pat," she said without any suggestion of apology in her candid tone. "I always get so excited when I'm proclaiming human rights."
Patricia looked puzzled and she answered quickly: "Human rights—my rights to the bit of hammering that belongs to me. Auntie, you know, advocates cotton-wool so strongly that I suppose I'm a bit daft on my end of the argument."
Patricia had been silent, but she spoke slowly and with a light breaking on her face. "I believe it's true, Constance," she said earnestly. "I can see now that it's the only way. I was getting terribly spoiled in cotton-wool, and——" She stopped because she did not want to seem to complain of Rosamond. "I'm glad Miss Ardsley got this dear room for me," she ended brightly, "I've had such fun since I've been here."
She saw that Constance was not too much deceived, and to turn the talk she seized the first thing that came into her mind.