“Ah!” cried Myra, with an unconscious imitation of Lady Mary’s own manner, which startled, and terrified, and enchanted all the bystanders, “if the higher education was only open to us poor women, if we were not persistently kept from all means of improving ourselves--we might get in time to be as intellectual as Mr. Thornleigh,” she added, laughing in her own proper voice. Lady Mary did not hear the end of this speech; she did not see herself in the little mimic’s satire. She was too much preoccupied, and too serious to notice the fun--and the smiles upon the faces of her friends annoyed without enlightening her. “How frivolous we all are,” she said, turning to the eldest Miss Baker, with a sigh; “off at a tangent, as soon as ever the pressure is removed. I am sure I don’t want to think it--but sometimes I despair, and feel that we must wait for a new generation before any real education is possible among women. They are all like a set of schoolboys let loose.” “My dear Lady Mary, that is what I am always telling you; not one in a hundred is capable of any intellectual elevation,” said the only superior person in the assembly; and they drew near the lecturer, and engaged him in a tough conversation, though he, poor man, having done his duty, and being as pleased to get it over as the audience, would have much preferred the merrier crowd who were streaming--with suppressed laughter, shaking their heads and uttering admonitions to wicked Myra--out into the sunshine, through the open door. “Don’t do that again,” cried Phil, very red. “I say, Myra, I like you and your fun, and all that; but I’ll never speak to you again, as long as I live, if you take off mamma!” “I didn’t mean it, dear,” said Myra, penitent. “I’m so sorry, I beg your pardon, Phil. Lady Mary’s a dear, and I wouldn’t laugh at her for all the world. But don’t you ever mimic anyone, there’s a good boy; for one gets into the habit without knowing what one does.” “Oh, that’s all very fine,” said Phil, feeling the exhortation against a sin for which he had no capability to be out of place; but he did not refuse to make up the incipient quarrel. As for Harry, he had not listened, and consequently was not aware how much share he had in the cause of the general hilarity. “I should like to know what all the fun’s about,” he said. “Good lord! to see you all at it like girls at school! Ladies are like sheep, it seems to me--where one goes you all follow; because that good little aunt of mine has a craze about education, do you all mean to make muffs of yourselves? Well, I’m not a man that stands up for superior intellect and that sort of thing--much; but, good gracious! do you ever see men go in for that sort of nonsense?” “That is because you are all so much cleverer, and better educated to start with, Mr. Thornleigh,” said Sissy Witherington. He looked up at her to see if she were laughing at him; but Sissy was incapable of satire, and meant what she said.