d had she given the canary its
clean water?

Mrs. Hallam was a loving mother with stern theories. Her own childhood
had been a season of repression, yet she was satisfied enough with her
morals as opposed to those of many round her. She intended, therefore,
to repeat the process. She had no patience--this was her favourite
expression--with the licence of young girls to-day: the manner in which
they read any novel, went to any play. She had no patience with this
rubbish about ignorance not being innocence. Of course it was; or if
it wasn't, it had very much the same result, and that was everything.
Girls read these trashy novels and got a notion that grown men and
women spent their whole lives falling in and out of love. They
naturally tried it and began flirtation as a sort of duty. If a girl
knew nothing, she did not know what to do. If she had no notion what
flirtation meant, she clearly couldn't do it--especially if she saw no
men till she was safely beyond her teens.

In any case, till she was twenty, Helena had no plays, novels, or
man-friends. Her reading was all lives, histories, and comic papers.
Her days were spent with relatives or younger friends, when she was not
alone.

She grew up an oddly fine tribute to the system, thus underlining the
depressing axiom which comes at length to all who study education: that
those who are going to be nice will turn out nice, whatever way you
train their youth, and much the same about the nasty. She was simple,
healthy, buoyant, cheerful, natural; everything that Hubert thought.
And who shall blame her if she was a little immature?

Hubert's letter was a real excitement in her cloistered life.

She had enjoyed her meeting with him. Men were a novelty, and to her
an author was still that thing of wonder which he appeared to a
suburban hostess twenty years ago. She thought him marvellously clever
at first sight, and rather alarming. Later, she thought him easy to
get on with and amusing. He played tennis well, liked finding crabs,
and Mother did not seem to mind them talking. It was quite a jolly
change. She finally thought him a dear and missed him when he left for
Town.

And now--this letter!

Nothing ever could be less expected. She read it and re-read, not
knowing really what she ought to do. She was just as excited and
laughed as gaily as he one day before--vaguely infected, no less, with
a thrill of irresponsible adventure.

Now, indeed, was