Tell me, how loved the young men in
your young days? how answered the maidens? Has the world changed
much, do you think? Had you not new women even then? girls who
hated the everlasting tapestry frame and spinning-wheel? Your
father's servants, were they so much worse off than the freemen who
live in our East-end slums and sew slippers for fourteen hours a day
at a wage of nine shillings a week? Do you think Society much
improved during the last thousand years? Is it worse? is it better?
or is it, on the whole, about the same, save that we call things by
other names? Tell me, what have YOU learned?
Yet might not familiarity breed contempt, even for ghosts.
One has had a tiring day's shooting. One is looking forward to
one's bed. As one opens the door, however, a ghostly laugh comes
from behind the bed-curtains, and one groans inwardly, knowing what
is in store for one: a two or three hours' talk with rowdy old Sir
Lanval--he of the lance. We know all his tales by heart, and he
will shout them. Suppose our aunt, from whom we have expectations,
and who sleeps in the next room, should wake and overhear! They
were fit and proper enough stories, no doubt, for the Round Table,
but we feel sure our aunt would not appreciate them:--that story
about Sir Agravain and the cooper's wife! and he always will tell
that story.
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