“One clock (there were two) took my fancy,” continued Robin. “The design on the top was evidently taken from Moore’s song about the love-lorn mermaid who was in pity transformed into a harp. There was the siren as the poet described her:— ‘Her hair, dropping tears from all its bright rings, Fell over her white arm to make the gold strings.’ I thought, if her lover had been true, and had married the mermaid, how would the lady have enjoyed her new strange life on shore? After floating about serenely on summer seas, how would the mermaid have enjoyed being jolted along in an ekká [a very rough country conveyance], or even being swung from a camel? It would have been a sad change for the poor siren, who would have felt like a fish out of water.” Mr. Hartley saw that his son was not thinking alone of the fabled siren, and he observed with his quiet smile,—“Sad indeed for her to exchange her native element for another quite uncongenial, unless she were gifted with wings to raise her to one higher and purer than either water or earth.” “I think that Alicia has such wings,” said Robin more gravely: “she seems to be truly, earnestly pious. Had she not been so, she would never have been Harold’s choice. Alicia spoke to me so nicely about helping in mission work. She has begun to read the Bible to her ayah, and has learned by heart all the first part of the parable of the Prodigal Son—in Urdu.” “Good!” was Mr. Hartley’s laconic comment. “Alicia speaks the language like—well, of course _not_ like a native, nor very grammatically neither, but very fairly indeed for a lady who has been but one cold season in India, and has had only servants on whom to practise. I daresay that in time she will make herself understood even by zamindars’ bibis [wives]. Only I’m afraid she’ll have—” “What?” inquired Mr. Hartley as his son stopped short. “Headaches,” responded Robin. “Many missionaries have headaches,” observed his father, who was now seldom without one. “Yes; but some can take headaches, and other aches too, as a hunter takes a hedge: it lies in his way; he goes over it or scrambles through it, spurs on, and is in at the death. But not every one is a hunter.” “You think, in short, that our bride has been too delicately nurtured, is of too soft a nature, too sensitive a frame, to bear the rough life which is before her?” said Mr. Hartley. “I think that we’re transplanting an exotic which requires a glass frame,” replied Robin; “and we’ve nothing for it but a hard, rough wall, exposed to rude blasts. But I forget,” the youth continued, resuming the cheerful tone which was natural to him, “our sweet exotic will have a fine strong pillar to lean on and cling to; and with the sunshine above and the pure air around her she may—yes, and will—rise higher and higher, till she may smile down on us all.” ------------------------------------------------------------------------ CHAPTER III