th
eternally in futilities. And then they all slowly drifted by with sad
eyes fixed on her, and she was still left playing, playing. And it
seemed as if whole weeks passed in that way, and she grew mortally
tired, but some power prevented her from resting. The evil spell held
her enthralled. Always cheerful, always polite and agreeable, she
continued her task, finding herself growing accustomed to it at last,
and duly resigned to the necessity, wearisome though it was. Then all
hope that the game would ever cease went away, and she played on,
mechanically, but always with that same polite cheerfulness, as of
afternoon calls. She would not for the world admit that she was tired.
But she was so tired that existence became a torture to her, and her
heart seemed about to break with the intolerable strain--when she woke
up with a start, and found herself lying in a constrained attitude,
half-choked by the bed-clothes.

She did not see the comic side of the dream till next morning, when she
told it at breakfast for the benefit of the family.

As Hadria was an ardent tennis-player, it struck her brethren as a
particularly inappropriate form of nightmare.

Hadria, at this time, went frequently with her father on his farming
walks, as he liked to have one or more of the family with him. She
enjoyed these walks, for Mr. Fullerton would talk about philosophy and
science, often of the most abstruse and entrancing kind. His children
were devoted to him. During these expeditions, they always vied with one
another to ferret out the most absurd story to tell him, he being held
as conqueror who made their father laugh most heartily. Sometimes they
all went in a body, armed with wild stories; and occasionally, across
the open fields, a row of eccentric-looking figures might be seen,
struggling in the grip of hilarious paroxysms; Mr. Fullerton doubled up
in the middle of a turnip-field, perhaps, with his family in contortions
round him. The air of the hills seemed to run to their heads, like wine.
Roulades of laughter, hearty guffaws, might have been heard for
surprising distances, much to the astonishment of the sober labourers
bending over their toil.

Ernest had to go back to college; Fred and Austin to school. The house
seemed very quiet and sad after the boys left, and Hadria missed her
sister more and more, as time went on.

Algitha wrote most happily.

"With all its drawbacks, this existence of hard work (yet not too hard)