A Lodge in the Wilderness

CHAPTER IV.-2

“I like that metaphor,” said the girl musingly. “Of course it is quite true that you do not get any nearer satisfaction by shifting your dwelling. But how hard it is for us to stretch the compasses and describe a wider circle.”

“It is getting easier every day. Our great-aunts had a code of rules laid down for them which nothing could break through. They left the schoolroom for a year or two of sentiment and gaiety, and then married and became good housewives; or perhaps they didn’t, and steered a precarious course on the high seas of scandal. Our grandfathers thought that the only choice lay between Amelia Sedley and Becky Sharp. They had not discovered Diana Warwick.”

The sun had gone down, and a soft mulberry afterglow filled the western heavens. The ponies stepped sedately over the ro