SCHOOL-DAYS
Up to eighteen we fight with fears,
And deal with problems grave and weighty,
And smile our smiles and weep our tears,
Just as we do in after years
From eighteen up to eighty.
When Elisabeth was sixteen her noonday was turned into night by the
death of her beloved Cousin Anne. For some time the younger Miss
Farringdon had been in failing health; but it was her rôle to be
delicate, and so nobody felt anxious about her until it was too late for
anxiety to be of any use. She glided out of life as gracefully as she
had glided through it, trusting that the sternness of her principles
would expiate the leniency of her practice; and was probably surprised
at the discovery that it was the leniency of her practice which finally
expiated the sternness of her principles.
She left a blank, which was never quite filled up, in the lives of her
sister Maria and her small cousin Elisabeth. The former bore her sorrow
better, on the whole, than did the latter, because she had acquired the
habit of bearing sorrow; but Elisabeth mourned with all the hopeless
misery of youth.
"It is no use trying to make me interested in things," she sobbed in
response to Christopher's clumsy though well-meant attempts to divert
her. "I shall never be interested in anything again--never. Everything
is different now that Cousin Anne is gone away."
"Not quite everything," said Christopher gently.
"Yes; everything. Why, the very trees don't look the same as they used
to look, and the view isn't a bit what it used to be when she was here.
All the ordinary things seem queer and altered, just as they do when you
see them in a dream."
"Poor little girl!"
"And now it doesn't seem worth while for anything to look pretty. I used
to love the sunsets, but now I hate them. What is the good of their
being so beautiful and filling the sky with red and gold, if _she_ isn't
here to see them? And what is the good of trying to be good and clever
if she isn't here to be pleased with me? Oh dear! oh dear! Nothing will
ever be any good any more."
Christopher laid an awkward hand upon Elisabeth's dark hair, and began
stroking it the wrong way. "I say, I wish you wouldn't fret so; it's
more than I can stand to see you so wretched. Isn't there anything that
I can do to make it up to you, somehow?"
"No; nothing. Nothing will ever comfort me any more; and how could a
great, stupid boy like you make up to me for having lost her?" moaned
poor little Elisabeth, with the selfishness of absorbing grief.
"Well, anyway, I am as fond of you as she was, for nobody could be
fonder of anybody than I am of you."
"That doesn't help. I don't miss her so because she loved me, but
because I loved her; and I shall never, never love any one else as much
as long as I live."
"Oh yes, you will, I expect," replied Christopher, who even then knew
Elisabeth better than she knew herself.
"No--I shan't; and I should hate myself if I did."
Elisabeth fretted so terribly after her Cousin Anne that she grew paler
and thinner than ever; and Miss Farringdon was afraid that the girl
would make herself really ill, in spite of her wiry constitution. After
much consultation with many friends, she decided to send Elisabeth to
school, for it was plain that she was losing her vitality through lack
of an interest in life; and school--whatever it may or may not
supply--invariably affords an unfailing amount of new interests. So
Elisabeth went to Fox How--a well-known girls' school not a hundred
miles from London--so called in memory of Dr. Arnold, according to whose
principles the school was founded and carried on.
It would be futile to attempt to relate the history of Elisabeth
Farringdon without telling in some measure what her school-days did for
her; and it would be equally futile to endeavour to convey to the
uninitiated any idea of what that particular school meant--and still
means--to all its daughters.
When Elisabeth had left her girlhood far behind her, the mere mention of
the name, Fox How, never failed to send thrills all through her, as God
save the Queen, and Home, sweet Home have a knack of doing; and for any
one to have ever been a pupil at Fox How, was always a sure and certain
passport to Elisabeth's interest and friendliness. The school was an
old, square, white house, standing in a walled garden; and those walls
enclosed all the multifarious interests and pleasures and loves and
rivalries and heart-searchings and soul-awakenings which go to make up
the feminine life from twelve to eighteen, and which are very much the
same in their essence, if not in their form, as those which go to make
up the feminine life from eighteen to eighty. In addition to these, the
walls enclosed two lawns and an archery-ground, a field and a pond
overgrown with water-lilies, a high mound covered with grass and trees,
and a kitchen-garden filled with all manner of herbs and pleasant
fruits--in short, it was a wonderful and extensive garden, such as one
sees now and then in some old-fashioned suburb, but which people have
neither the time nor the space to lay out nowadays. It also contained a
long, straight walk, running its whole length and shaded by impenetrable
greenery, where Elisabeth used to walk up and down, pretending that she
was a nun; and some delightful swings and see-saws, much patronized by
the said Elisabeth, which gave her a similar physical thrill to that
produced in later years by the mention of her old school.
The gracious personality which ruled over Fox How in the days of
Elisabeth had mastered the rarely acquired fact that the word _educate_
is derived from _educo_, to _draw out_, and not (as is generally
supposed) from _addo_, to _give to_; so the pupils there were trained to
train themselves, and learned how to learn--a far better equipment for
life and its lessons than any ready-made cloak of superficial knowledge,
which covers all individualities and fits none. There was no cramming or
forcing at Fox How; the object of the school was not to teach girls how
to be scholars, but rather how to be themselves--that is to say, the
best selves which they were capable of becoming. High character rather
than high scholarship was the end of education there; and good breeding
counted for more than correct knowledge. Not that learning was
neglected, for Elisabeth and her schoolfellows worked at their books for
eight good hours every day; but it did not form the first item on the
programme of life.
And who can deny that the system of Fox How was the correct system of
education, at any rate, as far as girls are concerned? Unless a woman
has to earn her living by teaching, what does it matter to her how much
hydrogen there is in a drop of rain-water, or in what year Hannibal
crossed the Alps? But it will matter to her infinitely, for the
remainder of her mortal existence, whether she is one of those graceful,
sympathetic beings, whose pathway is paved by the love of Man and the
friendship of Woman; or one of that much-to-be-blamed, if
somewhat-to-be-pitied, sisterhood, who are unloved because they are
unlovely, and unlovely because they are unloved.
It is not good for man, woman, or child to be alone; and the
companionship of girls of her own age did much toward deepening and
broadening Elisabeth's character. The easy give-and-take of perfect
equality was beneficial to her, as it is to everybody She did not forget
her Cousin Anne--the art of forgetting was never properly acquired by
Elisabeth; but new friendships and new interests sprang up out of the
grave of the old one, and changed its resting-place from a cemetery into
a garden. Elisabeth Farringdon could not be happy--could not exist, in
fact--without some absorbing affection and interest in life. There are
certain women to whom "the trivial round" and "the common task" are
all-sufficing who ask nothing more of life than that they shall always
have a dinner to order or a drawing-room to dust, and to whom the
delinquencies of the cook supply a drama of never-failing attraction and
a subject of never-ending conversation; but Elisabeth was made of other
material; vital interests and strong attachments were indispensable to
her well-being. The death of Anne Farringdon had left a cruel blank in
the young life which was none too full of human interest to begin with;
but this blank was to a great measure filled up by Elisabeth's adoration
for the beloved personage who ruled over Fox How, and by her devoted
friendship for Felicia Herbert.
In after years she often smiled tenderly when she recalled the absolute
worship which the girls at Fox How offered to their "Dear Lady," as they
called her, and of which the "Dear Lady" herself was supremely
unconscious. It was a feeling of loyalty stronger than any ever excited
by crowned heads (unless, perhaps, by the Pope himself), as she
represented to their girlish minds the embodiment of all that was right,
as well as of all that was mighty--and represented it so perfectly that
through all their lives her pupils never dissociated herself from the
righteousness which she taught and upheld and practised. And this
attitude was wholly good for girls born in a century when it was the
fashion to sneer at hero-worship and to scoff at authority when the word
obedience in the Marriage Service was accused of redundancy, and the
custom of speaking evil of dignities was mistaken for self-respect.
As for Felicia Herbert, she became for a time the very mainspring of
Elisabeth's life. She was a beautiful girl, with fair hair and clear-cut
features; and Elisabeth adored her with the adoration that is freely
given, as a rule, to the girl who has beauty by the girl who has not.
She was, moreover, gifted with a sweet and calm placidity, which was
very restful to Elisabeth's volatile spirit; and the latter consequently
greeted her with that passionate and thrilling friendship which is so
satisfying to the immature female soul, but which is never again
experienced by the woman who has once been taught by a man the nature of
real love. Felicia was much more religious than Elisabeth, and much more
prone to take serious views of life. The training of Fox How made for
seriousness, and in that respect Felicia entered into the spirit of the
place more profoundly than Elisabeth was capable of doing; for Elisabeth
was always tender rather than serious, and broad rather than deep.
"I shall never go to balls when I leave school," said Felicia to her
friend one day of their last term at Fox How, as the two were sitting in
the arbour at the end of the long walk. "I don't think it is right to go
to balls."
"Why not? There can be no harm in enjoying oneself, and I don't believe
that God ever thinks there is."
"Not in enjoying oneself in a certain way; but the line between
religious people and worldly people ought to be clearly marked. I think
that dancing is a regular worldly amusement, and that good people should
openly show their disapproval of it by not joining in it."
"But God wants us to enjoy ourselves," Elisabeth persisted. "And He
wouldn't really love us if He didn't."
"God wants us to do what is right, and it doesn't matter whether we
enjoy ourselves or not."
"But it does; it matters awfully. We can't really be good unless we are
happy."
Felicia shook her head. "We can't really be happy unless we are good;
and if we are good we shall 'love not the world,' but shall stand apart
from it."
"But I must love the world; I can't help loving the world, it is so
grand and beautiful and funny. I love the whole of it: all the trees and
the fields, and the towns and the cities, and the prim old people and
the dear little children. I love the places--the old places because I
have known them so long, and the new places because I have never seen
them before; and I love the people best of all. I adore people, Felicia;
don't you?"
"No; I don't think that I do. Of course I like the people that I like;
but the others seem to me dreadfully uninteresting."
"But they are not; they are all frightfully interesting when once you
get to know them, and see what they really are made of inside. Outsides
may seem dull; but insides are always engrossing. That's why I always
love people when once I've seen them cry, because when they cry they are
themselves, and not any make-ups."
"How queer to like people because you have seen them cry!"
"Well, I do. I'd do anything for a person that I had seen cry; I would
really."
Felicia opened her large hazel eyes still wider. "What a strange idea!
It seems to me that you think too much about feelings and not enough
about principles."
"But thinking about feelings makes you think about principles; feelings
are the only things that ever make me think about principles at all."
After a few minutes' silence Elisabeth asked suddenly:
"What do you mean to do with your life when you leave here and take it
up?"
"I don't know. I suppose I shall fall in love and get married. Most
girls do. And I hope it will be with a clergyman, for I do so love
parish work."
"I don't think I want to get married," said Elisabeth slowly, "not even
to a clergyman."
"How queer of you! Why not?"
"Because I want to paint pictures and to become a great artist. I feel
there is such a lot in me that I want to say, and that I must say; and I
can only say it by means of pictures. It would be dreadful to die before
you had delivered the message that you had been sent into the world to
deliver, don't you think?"
"It would be more dreadful to die before you had found one man to whom
you would be everything, and who would be everything to you," replied
Felicia.
"Oh! I mean to fall in love, because everybody does, and I hate to be
behindhand with things; but I shall do it just as an experience, to make
me paint better pictures. I read in a book the other day that you must
fall in love before you can become a true artist; so I mean to do so.
But it won't be as important to me as my art," said Elisabeth, who was
as yet young enough to be extremely wise.
"Still, it must be lovely to know there is one person in the world to
whom you can tell all your thoughts, and who will understand them, and
be interested in them."
"It must be far lovelier to know that you have the power to tell all
your thoughts to the whole world, and that the world will understand
them and be interested in them," Elisabeth persisted.
"I don't think so. I should like to fall in love with a man who was so
much better than I, that I could lean on him and learn from him in
everything; and I should like to feel that whatever goodness or
cleverness there was in me was all owing to him, and that I was nothing
by myself, but everything with him."
"I shouldn't. I should like to feel that I was so good and clever that I
was helping the man to be better and cleverer even than he was before."
"I should like all my happiness and all my interest to centre in that
one particular man," said Felicia; "and to feel that he was a fairy
prince, and that I was a poor beggar-maid, who possessed nothing but his
love."
"Oh! I shouldn't. I would rather feel that I was a young princess, and
that he was a warrior, worn-out and wounded in the battle of life; but
that my love would comfort and cheer him after all the tiresome wars
that he'd gone through. And as for whether he'd lost or won in the wars,
I shouldn't care a rap, as long as I was sure that he couldn't be happy
without me."
"You and I never think alike about things," said Felicia sadly.
"You old darling! What does it matter, as long as we agree in being fond
of each other?"
At eighteen Elisabeth said farewell to Fox How with many tears, and came
back to live at the Willows with Miss Farringdon. While she had been at
school, Christopher had been first in Germany and then in America,
learning how to make iron, so that they had never met during Elisabeth's
holidays; therefore, when he beheld her transformed from a little girl
into a full-blown young lady, he straightway fell in love with her. He
was, however, sensible enough not to mention the circumstance, even to
Elisabeth herself, as he realized, as well as anybody, that the nephew
of Richard Smallwood would not be considered a fitting mate for a
daughter of the house of Farringdon; but the fact that he did not
mention the circumstance in no way prevented him from dwelling upon it
in his own mind, and deriving much pleasurable pain and much painful
pleasure therefrom. In short, he dwelt upon it so exclusively and so
persistently that it went near to breaking his heart; but that was not
until his heart was older, and therefore more capable of being broken
past mending again.
Miss Farringdon and the people of Sedgehill were alike delighted to have
Elisabeth among them once more; she was a girl with a strong
personality; and people with strong personalities have a knack of making
themselves missed when they go away.
"It's nice, and so it is, to have Miss Elisabeth back again," remarked
Mrs. Bateson to Mrs. Hankey; "and it makes it so much cheerfuller for
Miss Farringdon, too."
"Maybe it'll only make it the harder for Miss Farringdon when the time
comes for Miss Elisabeth to be removed by death or by marriage; and
which'll be the best for her--poor young lady!--the Lord must decide,
for I'm sure I couldn't pass an opinion, only having tried one, and that
nothing to boast of."
"I wonder if Miss Farringdon will leave her her fortune," said Mrs.
Bateson, who, in common with the rest of her class, was consumed with an
absorbing curiosity as to all testamentary dispositions.
"She may, and she may not; there's no prophesying about wills. I'm
pleased to say I can generally foretell when folks is going to die,
having done a good bit of sick-nursing in my time afore I married
Hankey; but as to foretelling how they're going to leave their money, I
can no more do it than the babe unborn; nor nobody can, as ever I heard
tell on."
"That's so, Mrs. Hankey. Wills seem to me to have been invented by the
devil for the special upsetting of the corpse's memory. Why, some of the
peaceablest folks as I've ever known--folks as wouldn't have scared a
lady-cow in their lifetime--have left wills as have sent all their
relations to the right-about, ready to bite one another's noses off.
Bateson often says to me, 'Kezia,' he says, 'call no man honest till his
will's read.' And I'll be bound he's in the right. Still, it would be
hard to see Miss Elisabeth begging her bread after the way she's been
brought up, and Miss Farringdon would never have the conscience to let
her do it."
"Folks leave their consciences behind with their bodies," said Mrs.
Hankey; "and I've lived long enough to be surprised at nothing where
wills are concerned."
"That is quite true," replied Mrs. Bateson. "Now take Miss Anne, for
instance: she seemed so set on Miss Elisabeth that you'd have thought
she'd have left her a trifle; but not she! All she had went to her
sister, Miss Maria, who'd got quite enough already. Miss Anne was as
sweet and gentle a lady as you'd wish to see; but her will was as hard
as the nether millstone."
"There's nothing like a death for showing up what a family is made of."
"There isn't. Now Mr. William Farringdon's will was a very cruel one,
according to my ideas, leaving everything to his niece and nothing to
his son. True, Mr. George was but a barber's block with no work in him,
and I'm the last to defend that; and then he didn't want to marry his
cousin, Miss Maria, for which I shouldn't blame him so much; if a man
can't choose his own wife and his own newspaper, what can he
choose?--certainly not his own victuals, for he isn't fit. But if folks
only leave their money to them that have followed their advice in
everything, most wills would be nothing but a blank sheet of paper."
"And if they were, it wouldn't be a bad thing, Mrs. Bateson; there would
be less sorrow on some sides, and less crape on others, and far less
unpleasantness all round. For my part, I doubt if Miss Farringdon will
leave her fortune to Miss Elisabeth, and her only a cousin's child; for
when all is said and done, cousins are but elastic relations, as you may
say. The well-to-do ones are like sisters and brothers, and the poor
ones don't seem to be no connection at all."
"Well, let's hope that Miss Elisabeth will marry, and have a husband to
work for her when Miss Farringdon is dead and gone."
"Husbands are as uncertain as wills, Mrs. Bateson, and more sure to give
offence to them that trust in them; besides, I doubt if Miss Elisabeth
is handsome enough to get a husband. The gentry think a powerful lot of
looks in choosing a wife."
Mrs. Bateson took up the cudgels on Elisabeth's behalf. "She mayn't be
exactly handsome--I don't pretend as she is; but she has a wonderful way
of dressing herself, and looking for all the world like a fashion-plate;
and some men have a keen eye for clothes."
"I think nothing of fine clothes myself. Saint Peter warns us against
braiding of hair and putting on of apparel; and when all's said and done
it don't go as far as a good complexion, and we don't need any apostle
to tell us that--we can see it for ourselves."
"And as for cleverness, there ain't her like in all Mershire," continued
Mrs. Bateson.
"Bless you! cleverness never yet helped a woman in getting a husband,
and never will; though if she's got enough of it, it may keep her from
ever having one. I don't hold with cleverness in a woman myself; it has
always ended in mischief, from the time when the woman ate a bit of the
Tree of Knowledge, and there was such a to-do about it."
"I wish she'd marry Mr. Christopher; he worships the very ground she
walks on, and she couldn't find a better man if she swept out all the
corners of the earth looking for one."
"Well, at any rate, she knows all about him; that is something. I always
say that men are the same as kittens--you should take 'em straight from
their mothers, or else not take 'em at all; for, if you don't, you never
know what bad habits they may have formed or what queer tricks they will
be up to."
"Maybe the manager's nephew ain't altogether the sort of husband you'd
expect for a Farringdon," said Mrs. Bateson thoughtfully; "I don't deny
that. But he's wonderful fond of her, Mr. Christopher is; and there's
nothing like love for smoothing things over when the oven ain't properly
heated, and the meat is done to a cinder on one side and all raw on the
other. You find that out when you're married."
"You find a good many things out when you're married, Mrs. Bateson, and
one is that this world is a wilderness of care. But as for love, I
don't rightly know much about it, since Hankey would always rather have
had my sister Sarah than me, and only put up with me when she gave him
the pass-by, being set on marrying one of the family. I'm sure, for my
part, I wish Sarah had had him; though I've no call to say so, her
always having been a good sister to me."
"Well, love's a fine thing; take my word for it. It keeps the men from
grumbling when nothing else will; except, of course, the grace of God,"
added Mrs. Bateson piously, "though even that don't always seem to have
much effect, when things go wrong with their dinners."
"That's because they haven't enough of it; they haven't much grace in
their hearts, as a rule, haven't men, even the best of them; and the
best of them don't often come my way. But as for Miss Elisabeth, she
isn't a regular Farringdon, as you may say--not the real daughter of the
works; and so she shouldn't take too much upon herself, expecting dukes
and ironmasters and the like to come begging to her on their bended
knees. She is only Miss Farringdon's adopted daughter, at best; and I
don't hold with adopted children, I don't; I think it is better and more
natural to be born of your own parents, like most folk are."
"So do I," agreed Mrs. Bateson; "I'd never have adopted a child myself.
I should always have been expecting to see its parents' faults coming
out in it--so different from the peace you have with your own flesh and
blood."
Mrs. Hankey groaned. "Your own flesh and blood may take after their
father; you never can tell."
"So they may, Mrs. Hankey--so they may; but, as the Scripture says, it
is our duty to whip the old man out of them."
"Just so. And that's another thing against adopted children--you'd
hesitate about punishing them enough; I don't fancy as you'd ever feel
the same pleasure in whipping 'em as you do in whipping your own. You'd
feel you ought to be polite-like, as if they was sort of visitors."
"My children always took after my side of the house, I'm thankful to
say," said Mrs. Bateson; "so I hadn't much trouble with them."
"I wish I could say as much; I do, indeed. But the Lord saw fit to try
me by making my son Peter the very moral of his father; as like as two
peas they are. And when you find one poor woman with such a double
portion, you are tempted to doubt the workings of Providence."
Mrs. Bateson looked sympathetic. "That's bad for you, Mrs. Hankey!"
"It is so; but I take up my cross and don't complain. You know what a
feeble creature Hankey is--never doing the right thing; and, when he
does, doing it at the wrong time; well, Peter is just such another. Only
the other day he was travelling by rail, and what must he do but get an
attack of the toothache? Those helpless sort of folks are always having
the toothache, if you notice."
"So they are."
"Peter's toothache was so bad that he must needs take a dose of some
sleeping-stuff or other--I forget the name--and fell so sound asleep
that he never woke at the station, but was put away with the carriage
into a siding. Fast asleep he was, with his handkerchief over his face
to keep the sun off, and never heard the train shunted, nor nothing."
"Well, to be sure! Them sleeping-draughts are wonderful soothing, as
I've heard tell, but I never took one on 'em. The Lord giveth His
beloved sleep, and His givings are enough for them as are in health; but
them as are in pain want something a bit stronger, doubtless."
"So it appears," agreed Mrs. Hankey. "Well, there lay Peter fast asleep
in the siding, with his handkerchief over his face. And one of the
porters happens to come by, and sees him, and jumps to the conclusion
that there's been a murder in the train, and that our Peter is the
corpse. So off he goes to the station-master and tells him as there's a
murdered body in one of the carriages in the siding; and the
station-master's as put out as never was."
Mrs. Bateson's eyes and mouth opened wide in amazement and interest.
"What a tale, to be sure!"
"And then," added Peter's mother, growing more dramatic as the story
proceeded, "the station-master sends for the police, and the police
sends for the crowner, so as everything shall be decent and in order;
and they walks in a solemn procession--with two porters carrying a
shutter--to the carriage where Peter lies, all as grand and nice as if
it was a funeral."
"I never heard tell of such a thing in my life--never!"
"Then the station-master opens the door with one of them state keys
which always take such a long time to open a door which you could open
with your own hands in a trice--you know 'em by sight."
Mrs. Bateson nodded. Of course she knew them by sight; who does not?
"And then the crowner steps forward to take the handkerchief off the
face of the body, it being the perquisite of a crowner so to do," Mrs.
Hankey continued, with the maternal regret of a mother whose son has
been within an inch of fame, and missed it; "and just picture to
yourself the vexation of them all, when it was no murdered corpse they
found, but only our Peter with an attack of the toothache!"
"Well, I never! They must have been put about; as you would have been
yourself, Mrs. Hankey, if you'd found so little after expecting so
much."
"In course I should; it wasn't in flesh and blood not to be, and
station-master and crowner are but mortal, like the rest of us. I assure
you, when I first heard the story, I pitied them from the bottom of my
heart."
"And what became of Peter in the midst of it all, Mrs. Hankey?"
"Oh! it woke him up with a vengeance; and, of course, it flustered him a
good deal, when he rightly saw how matters stood, to have to make his
excuses to all them grand gentlemen for not being a murdered corpse. But
as I says to him afterward, he'd no one but himself to blame; first for
being so troublesome as to have the toothache, and then for being so
presumptuous as to try and cure it. And his father is just the same; if
you take your eye off him for a minute he is bound to be in some
mischief or another."
"There's no denying that husbands is troublesome, Mrs. Hankey, and sons
is worse; but all the same I stand up for 'em both, and I wish Miss
Elisabeth had got one of the one and half a dozen of the other. Mark my
words, she'll never do better, taking him all round, than Master
Christopher."
Mrs. Hankey sighed. "I only hope she'll find it out before it is too
late, and he is either laid in an early grave or else married to a
handsomer woman, as the case may be, and both ways out of her reach. But
I doubt it. She was a dark baby, if you remember, was Miss Elisabeth;
and I never trust them as has been dark babies, and never shall."
"And how is Peter's toothache now?" inquired Mrs. Bateson, who was a
more tender-hearted matron than Peter's mother.
"Oh! it's no better; and I know no one more aggravating than folks who
keep sayin' they are no better when you ask 'em how they are. It always
seems so ungrateful. Only this morning I asked our Peter how his tooth
was, and he says, 'No better, mother; it was so bad in the night that I
fairly wished I was dead.' 'Don't go wishing that,' says I; 'for if you
was dead you'd have far worse pain, and it 'ud last for ever and ever.'
I really spoke quite sharp to him, I was that sick of his grumbling; but
it didn't seem to do him no good."
"Speaking sharp seldom does do much good," Mrs. Bateson remarked
sapiently, "except to them as speaks."