'Hush! please let me finish. I do not mean make-believes, shifts to get through the day, fanciful labours befitting rank and station, but real work, that will fill one's heart and life.'
'Yours is a hungry nature. I fear the demand would double the supply. You would go starved from the very place where we poor ordinary mortals would have a full meal.'
Ethel pouted. 'I wish you would not borrow metaphors from our tiresome Mentor. I declare, Mildred, your words have always more or less a flavour of Dr. Heriot's.'
Mildred quietly took up her work. 'You know how to reduce me to silence.'
But Ethel playfully impeded the sewing by laying her crossed hands over it.
'Dr. Heriot's name seems an apple of discord between us, Mildred.'
'You are so absurd about him.'
'I am always provoked at hearing his opinions second-hand. I have less comfort in talking to him than to any one else; I always seem to be airing my own foolishness.'
'At least, I am not accountable for that,' returned Mildred, pointedly.
'No,' returned Ethel, with her charming smile, which at once disarmed Mildred's prudery. 'You wise people think and talk much alike; you are both so hard on mere visionaries. But I can bear it more patiently from you than from him.'