'And yet you dream dreams and see visions.'
'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.'
'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.'
'I cannot solve riddles,' replied Mildred, in her old sensible manner. 'It strikes me that you have fashioned Dr. Heriot into a sort of bugbear--a _bête noir_ to frighten naughty, prejudiced children; and yet he is truly gentle.'
'It is the sort of gentleness that rebukes one more than sternness,' returned Ethel in a low voice. 'How odd it is, Mildred, when one feels compelled to show the worst side of oneself, to the very people, too, whom one most wishes to propitiate, or, at least--but my speech threatens to be as incoherent as Olive's.'
'I know what you mean; it comes of thinking too much of a mere expression of opinion.'
'Oh no,' she returned, with a quick blush; 'it only comes from a rash impulse to dethrone Mentor altogether--the idea of moral leading reins are so derogatory after childhood has passed.'
'You must give me a hint if I begin to lecture in my turn. I shall forget sometimes you are not Olive or Chriss.'
The soft, brilliant eyes filled suddenly with tears.