Page:Coo-ee - tales of Australian life by Australian ladies.djvu/147

 VICTIMS OF CIRCE. 143

' Look,' I said, 'both of you, don't worry about Miss Ariell. She is probably neither worse nor better than many other women. She is only very silly, and lets herself think foolishness and speak it. She hears things, and knows things, and instead of sifting out the evil and sticking to the good, which is sure to be there too, mind you — riddling the contents of her mind, as it were, from time to time. (See what wonderfully good fires we get from riddled ashes. An allusion an Australian girl can understand with good housewifery in her blood. That's where you have the pull over English girls, my dears.) Now, Miss Ariell stores up all this rubbish, and her fires get clogged with the dust and the dirt of it till they can no longer send up a pure, clear flame to heaven, and the smoke of them smirches herself and others ; but it makes her own throat smart worst of all, for she can't get away from it. Children, you don't know how easily that happens to women, or the infinite pity of it'

Nancy caught my hand and held it against her smooth, shell-pink cheek. ' I believe you know a million times more things than she does, Mrs. Vallings. Your eyes look so deep and so full of things, often, and your mouth — it looks strong, as if you had learnt a great deal, and — as if it hurt you — hurt you — frightfully.'

' Yes, you do look like that sometimes, Nancy and I think,' said Mab, in a soft, breathless sort of fright.

' My little girls, whenever it is the lot of a woman