"
"The sensible way, too, to spend such days as these. To go out in
the cool of the morning, and take a siesta, is the only rational
plan!"
"I'm afraid one must conform to one's neighbours' ways."
"Trust a woman for being conventional."
"I confess I did not like the tone in which my poor Carey was spoken
of. I am afraid she can hardly have taken care enough not to be
thought flighty."
"Mary! you are as absurd as the rest of them!"
"Why? what have you seen of her?"
"Nothing, I tell you, except once meeting her in the street, and once
calling on her to ask whether her boy should learn German." And
David Ogilvie spoke with a vehemence that somewhat startled his
sister.
It was a July evening, and though the walls of the schoolmaster's
house were thick, it was sultry enough within to lead the brother and
sister out immediately after dinner, looking first into the play-
fields, where cricket was of course going on among the bigger boys,
but where Mary looked in vain for her friend's sons.
"No, they are not much of cricketers," said her brother; "they are
small for it yet, and only take their turn in watching-out by
compulsion. I wish the senior had more play in him. Shall we walk
on by the river?"
So they did, along a paved causeway which presently got clear of the
cottages and gables of old factories, and led along, with the
brightly glassy sheet of water on one side, and the steep wooded
slope on the other, loose-strife and meadow-sweet growing thickly on
the bank, amid long weeds with feathery tops, rich brown fingers of
sedge, and bur-reeds like German morgensterns, while above the long
wreaths of dog-roses projected, the sweet honeysuckle twined about,
and the white blossoms of traveller's joy hung in festoons from the
hedge of the bordering plantation.
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