“Yes,” said Katie. “We are trained to put up with everything that is disagreeable, just as boys are trained to everything that is pleasant.”
“Not to me, but I suppose it is to boys; and boating and everything of the kind. On our side we are taught quite differently. If there is anything more tiresome than another, more tedious, less likely to please us, that is what we are made to do.”
“My poor aunt! is she a tyrant then with her pupils? She is not a tyrant for her relations; or at least a very charming, delightful tyrant.”
“I did not mean Mrs. Stone; she is very kind--even to me; but I have been at other schools. I suppose it is for our good,” said Katie, with a sigh; “everything that is very disagreeable is for our good; though I wonder sometimes why the boys should not have a little trial of the same--for I suppose they too have got to put up with things that are disagreeable in their life.”
“We are supposed,” said the barytone, who was becoming quite visible to her, enthroned in his Chippendale chair, “to have most of the disagreeables of life, while you ladies who dwell at home at ease--”
“Ah!” cried Katie, setting down the cake-basket, “if you would but quote correctly. The man who wrote the song knew a great deal better. It is the gentlemen who live at home at ease. ‘To all you ladies now on land,’ is what he says; he knew better. We don’t go out to sea like him, but we go through just as much on land, you may be sure,” cried the girl with a sudden flush over her face; “it was not to us he said, ‘How little do you think upon the dangers of the seas.’ I have got a little brother a sailor,” she added, half under her breath.
“I have evidently chosen my illustration badly,” said the other, with prompt good-humor and a sympathetic tone. “If you have a little brother I have a big one at sea, so here is something to fraternize upon. Mine is the captain of a big merchantman, an old salt and does not mind the dangers of the sea.”
“Ah, but mine is a little middy,” said Katie, with a smile in her eyes and a tear trembling behind it, “he minds a great deal. He does not like it at all. And mamma and I feel the wind go through and through us whenever it blows.”
“I see,” said the gentleman, “these are the disagreeables of life you speak of--imaginary. Probably when he is in a gale you know nothing about it, and the winds that make you tremble have nothing to do with him; but these are very different, you must acknowledge, from real troubles.”