'About what?'
'About— Please don't take it ill of me, but it troubles me,
Hazel. About this sort of life you are leading.'
'This sort of life?' Hazel repeated, thinking over some of the days last past. 'Much you know about it!'
'I do not suppose I do. I cannot know much about it,' said Primrose meekly. 'All my way of life has been so different. But do you think, Hazel, really, that there is not something better to do with one's self than what all these gay people do?'
'I think you are a great deal better than I am—if that will content you.'
'Why should it content me?' said Primrose, laughing a little. 'I do not see anything pleasant in it, even supposing it were true.'
'There is some use in training you,' Hazel went on; 'but no amount of pruning would ever bring me into shape.' And with that, somehow, there came up the thought of a little sketch, wherein her hat swung gayly from the top of a rough hazel bush; and with the thought a pain so keen, that for the moment her head went down upon her hands on the window-sill.
Primrose was silent a few moments, not knowing just how to speak.
'But Hazel,' she began, slowly—'all these gay people you are so much with, they live just for the pleasure of the minute; and when the pleasure of the minute is over, what remains? I cannot bear to have you forget that, and become like them.'
'Like them?' said Hazel. 'Am I growing like Kitty Fisher?'