‘There you lie,’ said Aunt Lydia, ‘resting after your hard day’s work. What a laborious young man you must be, Laurie! I never saw any one who wanted so much rest.’
‘Thanks,’ said Laurence, with a little nod of his chin from the grass. ‘My constitution requires a great deal of rest, as you say. If you don’t mind moving a little, Aunt Lydia, you are sitting on my note-book. Thanks. There are some swans there I should not like to lose.’
‘And of what use are swans?’ said Mrs. Westbury. ‘I wish you would tell me, Laurie; I am such an ignorant creature, and I should like to know.’
‘Use?’ said Laurie, opening his eyes. ‘They don’t get made into patties, as far as I know;--but they are of about as much use as the most of us, I suppose.’
‘The most of us have a great deal to do in the world,’ said Aunt Lydia, growing very red, for she was fond of _pâtés_; ‘if you knew how many things have to pass through my hands from morning to night----’
‘Yes, I know,’ said lazy Laurence, raising his hand in soft deprecation. ‘Mary has been telling us;--but what is the use of that, Aunt Lydia? Why should you worry yourself? Things would go on just as well if you let them alone,--that’s what I always tell Ben. What’s the good of fidgeting? If you’ll believe,’ continued Laurie, raising himself a little on one elbow, ‘all the people who have ever made any mark in the world have been people who knew how to keep quiet and let things work themselves out. There’s your Queen Elizabeth,’ he said, warming to his subject, and giving a slight kick with his polished boot to a big volume on the grass; ‘the only quality she had was a masterly inaction. She kept quiet, and things settled themselves.’
‘Oh, Laurie! not when she killed that poor, dear, Queen Mary!’ cried his mother from the sofa. ‘I hate that woman’s very name.’
‘No,’ said Laurie, gracefully sinking down again among the grass, ‘that’s an instance of energy, mother,--a brutal quality, that always comes to harm.’