The air was full of the wild sweet freshness of the pines as she landed on the edge of the common; the seed pods on the gorse bushes were crackling in the heat, the ragged hedges on the roadside hung out long pennons of straggling branches, blossomed to the very tips with wild roses delicately sweet. Miss Maydew was not long in encountering the objects of her interest. As she went along to the rectory, carrying her large brown sunshade open in one hand, and her large white pocket-handkerchief to fan herself in the other, her ears and her eyes were alike attracted by a little group, under the shadow of a great tree just where the gorse and the pines ended. There were two tall girls in print frocks of the simplest character, and large hats of coarse straw; and seated on the root of the tree slightly raised above them, a plain little woman in a brown gown. Some well worn volumes were lying on the grass, but the book which one of the girls held in her hand, standing up in an attitude of indignant remonstrance, was a square slim book of a different aspect. The other held a huge pencil, one of those weapons red at one end and blue at the other which schoolboys love, which she twirled in her fingers with some excitement. Miss Maydew divined at once who they were, and walking slowly, listened. Their voices were by no means low, and they were quite unconscious of auditors and indifferent who might hear.
"What does 'nice' mean?" cried the elder, flourishing the book. "Why, is it not ladylike? If one is clever, and has a gift, is one not to use it? Not _nice?_ I want to know what _nice_ means?"
"My dear," said the governess, "I wish you would not always be asking what everything means. A great many things are understood without explanation in good society----"
"But we don't know anything about good society, nor society at all. Why is it not nice for Mab to draw? Why is it unladylike?" cried the girl, her eyes sparkling. As for the other one, she shrugged her shoulders, and twirled her pencil, while Miss Brown looked at them with a feeble protestation, clasping her hands in despair.
"Oh, Cicely! never anything but why?--why?" she said, with lofty, yet pitying disapproval, "You may be sure it is so when I say it." Then, leaving this high position for the more dangerous exercise of reason. "Besides, the more one thinks of it, the more improper it seems. There are drawings of _gentlemen_ in that book. Is that nice, do you suppose? Gentlemen! Put it away; and, Mabel, I desire you never to do anything so very unladylike again."