"You were very snappish and peevish with me just now, Conrad, without waiting to hear what I had to say. But I overlook it. I am your mother. If you had waited, I should have told you that I have no fault whatever to find with Miss Nightingale's bathing-dress. It is, no doubt, strictly _en regle_. Nor can I say, in these days, what I think of girls practising exercises that in _my_ day were thought unwomanly. All is changed now, and I am old-fashioned. But this I do say, that had your father, or your great-uncle, Dr. Everett Gayler, been told forty years ago that a time would come when it would be thought no disgrace for an _English girl_ to jump off a boat with an _unmarried man_ in it.... My dear, I am sure the latter would have made one of those acrid and biting remarks for which he was celebrated in his own circle, and which have even, I believe, been repeated by Royalty. That is the only thing I have to say. I say nothing of girls learning to swim and dive. I say nothing of their bicycling. Possibly the young lady who passed the window this morning with a gentleman _on the same bicycle_ was properly engaged to him; or his sister. Even about the practice of Sandow, or Japanese wrestling, I have nothing to say. But if they are to dive off boats in the open sea, in the face of all the beach, at least let the boats be rowed by married men. That is all I ask. It is very little." What fools mothers sometimes are about their sons! They contrive that these sons shall pass through youth to early manhood without a suspicion that even mothers have human weaknesses. Then, all in a moment, just when love has ridden triumphant into the citadel of the boys' souls, they will sacrifice all--all they have won in a lifetime--to indulge some petty spleen against the new _regime_ that threatens their dethronement. And there is no surer way of undermining a son's loyalty than to suggest a want of delicate feeling in the new Queen--nothing that can make him question the past so effectually as to force him to hold his nostrils in a smell of propriety, puffed into what seems to him a gale from heaven. The contrast between the recent merpussy in the freshening seas, and this, as it seemed to him, perfectly gratuitous intrusion of moral carbolic acid, gave Dr. Conrad a sense of nausea, which his love for his mother enjoined ignorance of. His mind cast about, not for ways of excusing Sally--the idea!--but of whitewashing his mother, without seeming to suggest that her own mind had anything Fescennine about it. This is always the great difficulty skywardness has in dealing with the moral scavenger. Are not the motives of purity unimpeachable? Goody Vereker, however, did not suspect herself of being a fool. On the contrary, she felt highly satisfied with her speech, and may be said to have hugged its peroration. Her son flushed slightly and bit his lip, giving the old lady time for a corollary in a subdued and chastened voice.