"I am ashamed to tell you what I came for," said Madam Pennington. "It was to ask about a girl. Can I do anything with Winny Lafferty?"
"I wish you could," said Mrs. Holabird, benevolently.
"She needs doing with" said Barbara.
"Your having her would be different from our doing so," said Mrs. Holabird. "I often think that one of the tangles in the girl-question is the mistake of taking the rawest specimens into families that keep but one. With your Lucy, it might be the very making of Winny to go to you."
"The 'next' for her, as Ruth would say," said Barbara.
"Yes. The least little thing that comes next is better than a world full of wisdom away off beyond. There is too much in 'general housework' for one ignorant, inexperienced brain to take in. What should we think of a government that gave out its 'general field-work' so?"
"There won't be any Lucys long," said Madam Pennington, with a sigh. "What are homes coming to?"
"Back to homes, I hope, from houses divided against themselves into parlors and kitchens," said mother, earnestly. "If I should tell you all I think about it, you would say it was visionary, I am afraid. But I believe we have got to go back to first principles; and then the Lucys will grow again."
"Modern establishments are not homes truly," said Madam Pennington.
"We shall call them by their names, as the French do, if we go on," said mother,—"hotels."