mine,' said Primrose. 'Why not, Miss Kennedy?'

'Mr. Falkirk always says, "My dear, be a woman and be brave!"--
But I think she fails on both points.'

'I don't understand,' said Primrose, while Rollo's smile grew
amused. 'I don't quite understand you, Miss Kennedy. She looks
brave to me.'

'No, she don't,' said Wych Hazel decidedly; 'anybody can stick
on a helmet. What is that half asleep lion for, Mr. Rollo?'

'He isn't half asleep!' said Primrose. 'He looks very grimly
enduring. But I agree with Miss Kennedy, that Fortitude should
not wear a helmet, with a plume in it, too! She is quite as
apt to be found under a sun-bonnet, I think.'

'Bravo, Prim!' said Rollo.

'And she ought to have her hands crossed.'

'Crossed?' said Wych Hazel.

'Yes, I think so.'

'This fashion?' said the girl folding her tiny hands across
her breast. 'They would not stay there two seconds, if _I_ was
enduring anything.'

Rosy crossed her own hands after another fashion, and was
silent.

'How do you generally hold your hands when you are enduring
anything?' Rollo asked the other speaker demurely.

'Ah, now you are laughing at me!' she said. 'But I don't think
I quite understand passive, inactive fortitude. I like Niobe's
arms, all wrapped about her child,--do you remember?'

'I remember. But you don't call _that_ fortitude, do you?'

'Yes,' said Wych Hazel. 'She was dying by inches,--and yet her
arms look, so strong! I am sure she didn't know whether they
were crossed or uncrossed.'

'Do you think that lion there in the corner looks like Mr.
Falkirk?'

'No, indeed! Mr. Falkirk would take a good deal more notice of
me, if _I_ was balancing myself on one finger,' said Wych Hazel.

'What _is_ that one finger for?' said Primrose.

'Do you ask that, Rosy? To show that she has nothing earthly
to lean upon. She just touches the pillar, as much as to say
it is broken and of no use to her. Perhaps her confidence is
in that slumbering lion,--Is that another representation of
fortitude?'

He had hid Sir Joshua's picture with an engraving of
Delaroche's Marie Antoinette leaving the Tribunal.

'She knew what it meant, I should think, if anybody did. But
most fortitude--real fortitude--be always unhappy?' said Hazel
looking perplexedly at the picture.

Rollo turned back to the Reynolds. 'You were both wrong about
this,' said he; 'at least I think so. Real fortitude _does_
figuratively, go helmeted and plumed. She endures so p