Page:Lesbia Newman - Dalton - 1889.djvu/122

 can be done, I fear, with those of us who have reached middle life under the old bondage. It is the education of young girls that must be attacked, as my uncle has attacked it in my case, and as your friends have evidently in yours, Letty. That has certainly been done to some extent also in the best girls’ schools and colleges which late years have brought into being. Still there is a deplorable backsliding and want of wholeness in the movement, as evinced by the fashions in dress against which we both declaim. The old social disease is very deep-seated, and may need some drastic remedy. A new broom sweeps clean, and it seems to me that the present atmosphere of society bears signs that some great event is at hand to do the work. What form it will take exactly none of us can tell, but the signs are in the sky.’

As the American girl read these last lines of her English friend’s, she felt a swimming in the head quite unusual with her. Someone in the room at her house, where she was conning over Lesbia’s letter, interrupted her reading to ask a question, but her memory and comprehension collapsed; she could only stare stupidly at the speaker. And as she gazed thus vacantly, the room and its furniture melted away before her, and there rose in its place the deck of the Milford steamer entering Cork Harbour, with herself and Lesbia and Mr Bristley upon it, looking up at Roche’s Tower looming grim through the fog. The experience was as unpleasant as new to her, but it was over in a minute, and Letitia sprang up and went out of the room, edifying her companion by the remark, ‘Guess philosophy’s a fine thing, but at times a blue pill’s a finer, and I'll just put myself outside one.’