"Afraid of a fall, eh?" laughed Mr Bagnall. "Well, ladies are not expected to be as venturesome as men." Now, why do men always fancy that it is a woman's duty to do what men expect her? I cannot see it one bit. "I was not afraid of that, Sir," said Flora. Father, with whom Flora is a favourite, was listening with a smile. I believe Aunt Drummond was his pet sister. "No? Why, what then?" said Mr Bagnall, shaking the pepper over his turkey pie until I wondered what sort of a throat he would have when he had finished it. "I am afraid of hardening my heart, Sir," said Flora, in her calm decisive way. "Hardening your heart, girl! What do you mean?" said Father. "Hardening your heart by riding to hounds!" "A little puzzling, certainly," said Sir Robert Dacre, who sat opposite. "We must ask Miss Drummond to explain." He did not speak in that disagreeable way that Mr Bagnall did; but Flora flushed up when she found three gentlemen looking at her, and asking her for an explanation. "I mean," she answered, "that one hardens one's heart by taking pleasure in anything which gives another creature pain. But I beg your pardon; indeed I did not mean to put myself forward." "No, no, child; we drew you forward," said Father, kindly. He gets over his tempers in a moment, and he seemed to have quite forgotten the passage at arms with my Aunt Kezia. "Still, I do not quite understand," said Sir Robert, not at all unkindly. "Who is the injured creature in this case, Miss Drummond?" Flora's colour rose again. "The hare, Sir," she said. "The hare!" cried Mr Bagnall, leaning back in his chair to laugh. "Well, Miss Flora, you are quixotic." "May I quote my father, Sir?" was her reply. "He says that Don Quixote (supposing him a real person, which I take it he was not) was one of the noblest men the world ever saw, only the world was not ready for him." "The world not ready for him? No, I should think not!" laughed Father. "Not just yet, my little lady-errant." Flora smiled quietly. "Perhaps it will be, some day. Uncle Courtenay," she said. "When the larks fall from the sky--eh, Miss Flora?" said Mr Bagnall, rubbing his hands again in that odious way he has. "When `they shall not hurt nor destroy in all My holy mountain,'" was Flora's soft answer. "Surely you don't suppose that literal?" replied Mr Bagnall, laughing. "Why, you must be as bad--I had nearly said as _mad_--as my next neighbour, Everard Murthwaite (of Holme Cultram, you know," he explained aside to Father). "Why, he has actually got a notion that the Jews are to be restored to Palestine! Whoever heard of such a mad idea? Only think--the Jews!" "Ridiculous nonsense!" said Father. "Is it not usually the case," asked Mr Keith, who till then had hardly spoken, "that the world counts as mad the wisest men in it?" "Why, Mr Keith, you must be one of them!" cried Mr Bagnall. "Of the wise men? Thank you!" said Mr Keith, drily. There was a laugh at this.