"It's a hard task for a lonely man to manage a family of children. He
gets all the kicks, and none of the thanks!"
"That's exaggeration, dear--which you are always protesting against in
others. We are tiresome and self-willed, but we know very well how much
we owe to you, and your care for us. It hurts us as much as it hurts
you when we disagree; but we've got to live our own lives, father!"
"And you imagine that you know better how to set about it than a man who
has lived more than twice as long, and has had ten times the
experience?"
Margot hesitated.
"In a way--no; in a way--yes! We know ourselves, daddy, as even you
cannot do, and it is impossible for one person, however kind and wise he
may be, to lay down the law as to what is to be the object of other
lives. We all have our own ambitions; what could satisfy one, would
leave another empty and aching. Agnes, for instance, and me! How
different we are! Her idea of happiness would be a house worked by
machinery, where every hour the same things happened at precisely the
same moment, and there were never any cataracts and breaks, and nobody
ever came down late to breakfast. I should like to have breakfast in
bed, and a new excitement every single day! We are not all cut out of
one pattern, and we are not children any longer, dear. Sometimes you
forget that. When you were twenty-three, you were married, and had a
home of your own."
"Ron is not twenty-one."
"When you were twenty-one, did you want your own way, or were you
willing for other people to decide for you?"
Mr Vane sighed, and moved his head impatiently.
"Here we are back again at the same old argument! It's waste of time,
Margot. I can't alter my ideas, but I'll try to keep a tighter rein
over myself for the next few months. We mustn't have any more scenes
like to-night."
"No." Margot spoke as gravely as himself. "We mustn't, daddy, for your
sake as well as ours, and therefore I think it wise to remove the cause
of your irritation. You said we might go away to the country together,
Ron and I, and we have decided on Scotland--on a glen in Perthshire, six
miles from the nearest station, where the landlady of a quaint little
inn takes in a few boarders. It will be very primitive, I expect, and
we shall live on cream and porridge and mountain air, and grow brown and
bonnie, and study Nature as we have never had a chance of doing before.
Six miles from a station, daddy! There's seclusion, if you like!"
Mr Vane knitted his brow, uncertain whether to approve or object.