‘I am glad you put the blues after the bread,’ said Anne; ’there is hope of you yet, Lizzie.’

Elizabeth was too far advanced in her career of nonsense to be easily checked, even by Anne; and she continued, ’Sir Walter Scott says in one of his letters, that he wishes there could be a whole village of poets and antiquaries isolated from the rest of the world.  That must be like what I mean.’

‘I do not think he meant what he said there,’ said Helen.

‘And pray remember,’ said Anne, ’that your favourite brown bread is made of all those kinds mixed—­bran, and pastry-flour, and all.’

‘Yes,’ said Helen, ’all the world would turn idiots if there were not a few sensible people to raise the others.’

‘Well,’ said Elizabeth, ’you know the Veillees du Chateau says, there is a village where all the people do turn idiots at fourteen.’

‘You are just the right age, Helen,’ said Anne, ’you had better take care, since Lizzie says you live in such a foolish world.’

Helen had not tact enough to perceive that it was better to turn off the discussion by a joke, and continued, ’And you forget how useful it is to the sensible people to be obliged to bear and forbear.’

’I should be content, if the foolish people would be raised by the wise, instead of debasing them,’ said Elizabeth.

‘If people are really wise, they will not let themselves be debased,’ said Anne.

Helen glanced towards Lucy, Elizabeth caught her eye, and smiled in a way which almost compensated for all her unkindness in their dispute an hour before.

Harriet and Katherine, who had not been much interested by this argument, now started another subject of conversation, which they had almost entirely to themselves, and which occupied them until tea was over, somewhat to Anne’s amusement and Elizabeth’s disgust, as they listened to it.

As soon as the tea-things were removed, Elizabeth and Anne went to fetch the children.  Elizabeth let loose her indignation as soon as she was out of the drawing-room.

‘Did you ever hear anything so vulgar?’ said she.

‘Indeed it was very ridiculous,’ said Anne, beginning to laugh at the remembrance.

‘How can you be diverted with things that enrage me?’ said Elizabeth.

‘It is better than taking them to heart, as you do, my poor Lizzie,’ said Anne; ‘they are but folly after all.’

‘Disgusting provoking folly,’ said Elizabeth; ’and then to see Kate looking as if she thought it must be so delectable.  Really, Kate is quite spoiled between Harriet and the Abbeychurch riff-raff, and I can do nothing to prevent it.’

‘But,’ said Anne diffidently, seeing that her cousin was in a graver mood this evening, ’do not you think that perhaps if you could be a little more companionable to Kate, and not say things so evidently for the sake of contradiction, you might gain a little useful influence ?’