"I'll tell you what I was doing when you two were talking," she said, with the sudden burst of friendliness that comes so strangely from a lonely child. "I was thinking." "Thinking, Helen! Were your thoughts worth a penny?" Helen was not to be dealt lightly with. She was very serious. "I heard what you were saying when I came into the room," she went on. "And I wondered what you meant when you said that children must belong to their generation." Cousin Mary looked grave. "It would take a long time to explain all that I meant," she said. "Perhaps we shall have a chance of talking it over before I leave. I didn't mean that the girls and boys of to-day have any excuse for being naughty and rebellious. But I sometimes think that as we grown-up people move about so much, and are tempted to grow restless and impatient, so the same influences may affect children to a certain extent, and that a very strict routine may be a little more irksome to them now than it was to us thirty years ago." "Oh, it is dreadful!--dreadful!" murmured Helen. "Nonsense! Not dreadful, only perhaps a little tiresome." Helen's tone had been tragic, but there was a gleam of fun in Cousin Mary's eyes as she replied that brought a smile to the girl's face. "Very tiresome," she said. "I hate lessons." "They are a little wee bit trying sometimes, I grant. And yet we must learn them; must go on learning them all our lives." Cousin Mary's face had grown grave again, and Helen began to think her the most perplexing person that she had ever met. "Go on learning!" she repeated. "Grown-up people don't learn lessons." "Not book lessons exactly, though I think I have learnt more book lessons even since I have been grown up than I did in the school-room. But that is a matter of choice. There are certain lessons that we must learn, because God goes on teaching them to us until we really know them." "Oh! What are they?" asked Helen in an awe-struck whisper. "I think obedience is one," replied Cousin Mary, with that little smile lurking in her eyes again. "I am dreadfully disobedient sometimes, but I am always sorry for it afterwards, I think. Perhaps some day I shall learn to know that my way is not best, and then I sha'n't want to be disobedient again." "You disobedient!" "It is quite true. For instance, I didn't want to come up to town at this particular time. I very nearly said I wouldn't come. You see, my doing so interfered with some very pleasant plans that I had made. That was why I did not like it, although I knew all the time that I ought to come. Now I begin to be very glad that I did not follow my own way, not only because I have done my duty, but because I have found a new cousin whom I mean to like very much." The expression of Helen's face altered as she listened to her new friend's words. Her eyes, that had been heavy and downcast, lit up; she raised her head and threw back her hair with something of her old, careless gesture.