Part 50 (1/2)

Henriette looked at her sister-in-law, with a sad and baffled mien.

Hadria's expression was solemn, and as much like that of Mrs. Walker as she could make it, without descending to obvious caricature.

”Do you think it quite wise, Henriette, to run dead against the customs of ages? Do you think it safe to ignore the opinion of countless generations of those who were older and wiser than ourselves?”

”Dear me, how you _have_ changed!” cried Miss Temperley.

”Advancing years; the sobering effects of experience,” Hadria explained.

She was grieved to find Henriette at variance with those who had practical knowledge of education. As the child grew up, one could easily explain to him that the ideas and impressions that he might have acquired, in early years, were mostly wrong, and had to be reversed.

That was quite simple. Besides, unless he were a born idiot of criminal tendencies, he was bound to find it out for himself.

”But, my dear Hadria, it is just the early years that are the impressionable years. Nothing can quite erase those first impressions.”

”Oh, do you think so?” said Hadria mildly.

”Yes, indeed, I think so,” cried Henriette, losing her temper.

”Oh, well of course you may be right.”

Hadria had brought out a piece of embroidery (about ten years old), and was working peacefully.

On questions of hygiene, she was equally troublesome. She had taken hints, she said, from mothers of large families. Henriette laid stress upon fresh air, even in the house. Hadria believed in fresh air; but was it not going a little far to have it in the house?

Henriette shook her head.

Fresh air was _always_ necessary. In moderation, perhaps, Hadria admitted. But the utmost care was called for, to avoid taking cold. She laid great stress upon that. Children were naturally so susceptible. In all the nurseries that she had visited, where every possible precaution was taken against draughts, the children were incessantly taking cold.

”Perhaps the precautions made them delicate,” Henriette suggested. But this paradox Hadria could not entertain. ”Take care of the colds, and the fresh air will take care of itself,” was her general maxim.

”But, my dear Hadria, do you mean to tell me that the people about here are so benighted as really not to understand the importance to the system of a constant supply of pure air?”

Hadria puckered up her brow, as if in thought. ”Well,” she said, ”several mothers _have_ mentioned it, but they take more interest in fluid magnesia and tonics.”

Henriette looked dispirited.

At any rate, there was no reason why Hadria should not be more enlightened than her neighbours, on these points. Hadria shook her head deprecatingly. She hoped Henriette would not mind if she quoted the opinion of old Mr. Jordan, whose language was sometimes a little strong.

He said that he didn't believe all that ”d.a.m.ned nonsense about fresh air and drains!” Henriette coughed.

”It is certainly not safe to trust entirely to nurses, however devoted and experienced,” she insisted. Hadria shrugged her shoulders. If the nurse _did_ const.i.tutionally enjoy a certain stuffiness in her nurseries--well the children were out half the day, and it couldn't do them much harm. (Hadria bent low over her embroidery.)

The night?

”Oh! then one must, of course, expect to be a little stuffy.”

”But,” cried Miss Temperley, almost hopeless, ”impure air breathed, night after night, is an incessant drain on the strength, even if each time it only does a little harm.”

Hadria smiled over her silken arabesques. ”Oh, n.o.body ever objects to things that only do a little harm.” There was a moment of silence.

Henriette thought that Hadria must indeed have changed very much during the last years. Well, of course, when very young, Hadria said, one had extravagant notions: one imagined all sorts of wild things about the purposes of the human brain: not till later did one realize that the average brain was merely an instrument of adjustment, a sort of spirit-level which enabled its owner to keep accurately in line with other people. Henriette ought to rejoice that Hadria had thus come to bow to the superiority of the collective wisdom.