"These are some essays by Carlyle, and Macaulay, and Emerson. I am only dipping into them, but they make you think, don't they? And they make me long to work. I have had so much time to think and to read. I am simply yearning to do—" "You must come and see me, and we will have a good talk together," said Sidney, being almost startled by the vehemence in the girl's tone. Mrs. Norman had caught a bit of the conversation. "Ah, Miss Urquhart," she said, laughing. "It is the young people who teach us in the present day. They are so wise, so full of enthusiasm, so intense in what they feel and hope for. When I listen to my girl, it reminds me of my hot-headed youth, and I pray she may not be awakened so quickly as I was." Gavine looked at her mother. "How were you awakened?" she asked gravely. "My dear child. You will know how later on. Life has hardly touched you yet. You are only on the threshold." "You talk as if you were Methuselah!" said Austin. "How can you be so absurd?" "Am I absurd!" Mrs. Norman lowered her voice and turned her head away from Sidney and her daughter. "My dear boy, Gavine makes me feel a frivolous doll; she is the essence of lead. Her heaviness and stolid matter-of-fact sense have a most depressing effect upon me. I feel bound with chains when she is in the room. And when we go about together, I have the awful desire to shock her. Isn't it dreadful of me? For she's such a good earnest girl, and her good worthy aunts are so much more to her than her own mother is. She is never happy till she gets away from me. And I assure you she would be scandalised if she saw me tumbling about on the ice to-morrow. She thinks I ought to be dressed up in a lace cap and spectacles and sit over the fire knitting shawls for the poor. That is her ideal mother!" Austin laughed. He could not help it; but he felt a little uncomfortable. Gavine's good looks impressed him. He was inclined to talk to her, and when presently her laugh rang out at one of Sidney's speeches, he moved across the room and joined them. "What is the joke?" "I was only describing some of our characters here," said Sidney, and then she rose to go. Austin stayed behind. He did not offer to accompany her, but she was accustomed to that now. She went home wondering what kind of intercourse there was between mother and daughter. "I don't know which I pity most," she said to herself. "The girl wants more gaiety in her, the mother less. But I like the looks of Gavine, and hope I shall see something of her." There was no skating the next day. A sudden thaw set in. Sidney did not see either of the girls for some time, as her father was in bed with a slight attack of bronchitis, and she hardly left the house. The Major was in very low spirits as he watched Mrs. Norman riding off to the meets with Austin. He shut himself up in his workshop, and growled at everyone who came near him.