‘Should I be happier wandering alone in strange countries as you wish to do?’

‘Much happier, even if you did nothing but wander. Remember, however, that I shall have an object in view; but if you only went on and on, like some enchanted lady in a fairy tale, you might be happier than now. In a day’s wandering you would pass many a hill, wood and watercourse, each perpetually altering in aspect as the sun shone out or was overcast, as the weather was wet or fair, dark or bright. Nothing changes in Briarfield Rectory—the plaster of the parlour ceilings, the paper on the walls, the curtains, carpets, chairs, are still the same.’

‘Is change necessary to happiness?’

‘Yes.’

‘Is it synonymous with it?’

‘I don’t know; but I feel monotony and death to be almost the same.’

Here Jessy spoke.

‘Isn’t she mad?’ she asked.

‘But, Rose,’ pursued Caroline, ‘I fear a wanderer’s life—for me, at least—would end like that tale you are reading: in disappointment, vanity, and vexation of spirit.’

‘Does “The Italian” so end?’

‘I thought so when I read it.’

‘Better to try all things and find all empty than to try nothing and leave your life a blank. To do this is to commit the sin of him who buried his talent in a napkin—despicable sluggard!’

‘Rose,’ observed Mrs. Yorke, ‘solid satisfaction is only to be realized by doing one’s duty.’

‘Right, mother! And if my Master has given me ten talents, my duty is to trade with them, and make them ten talents more. Not in the dust of household drawers shall the coin be interred. I will not deposit it in a broken-spouted teapot and shut it up in a china-closet among tea-things. I will not commit it to your work-table to be smothered in piles of woollen hose. I will not prison it in the linen-press to find shrouds among the sheets; and, least of all, mother’ (she got up from the floor)—‘least of all will I hide it in a tureen of cold potatoes, to be ranged with bread, butter, pastry and ham on the shelves of the larder.’

She stopped; then went on:

‘Mother, the Lord who gave each of us our talents will come home some day, and will demand from all an account. The teapot, the old stocking-foot, the linen rag, the willow-pattern tureen, will yield up their barren deposit in many a house. Suffer your daughters, at least, to put their money to the exchangers, that they may be enabled at the Master’s coming to pay Him His own with usury.’

‘Rose, did you bring your sampler with you, as I told you?’

‘Yes, mother.’

‘Sit down and do a line of marking.’

Rose sat down promptly, and wrought according to orders. After a busy pause of ten minutes her mother asked: