“I think you are right, Mrs. Endicott. While I admit the necessity of every woman knowing something whereby she can support herself, I sometimes wonder if the reformers are not carrying the matter too far. Girls are painters and poets and shop-keepers and teachers. When they marry, housework is distasteful to them. They do not know how to cook a dinner or make a dress, they cannot carry on a household in a pleasant, agreeable manner. They must board or depend upon servants. There is nothing but complaint and discouragement. They may be valuable members of society, but their time is too precious to be wasted upon real living. Every year homes become more rare.”
“It is too sadly true,” said papa. “There is a wide difference between a fashionable house and a pleasant home. And home used to mean something besides a place in which one slept and took his meals.”
“But some women never marry and never have a home,” interposed Fanny.
“There are exceptions. Yet many prefer the other course. I know families of girls who might have assisted and comforted their mothers, but who went to neighboring towns or cities, earning barely enough to keep themselves, sleeping in miserable close attics when they could have clean airy rooms at home, and exposed to flippant injurious companionship that destroys all the finer graces of a woman’s soul. Their mother has to depend upon Irish help whose waste and wages would doubtless dress two daughters. She has no society at home and is worried out of her life. What is it all for? Why can they not make each other happy?”
“An imaginary liberty,” answered mamma. “I want to make my home so pleasant that my girls will be sorry to leave it. I hope to instruct them in such a manner that they will be able to make other happy homes, and then I shall have no fear for them.”
“And when seven daughters rise up and call you blessed, you will be overwhelmed, little mother,” returned Fan clasping her arms around mamma’s neck. “It is what we expect to do by and by, when Edith is old enough to fill out the row gracefully. Yet I do sometimes feel appalled at the host to take care of. Clergymen may abound in grace but they seldom do in this world’s goods. We are not ravens, nor lilies of the field.”
“I think you will find it coming out rightly in the end,” said Miss Churchill with a smile. “Your mother’s theories may not be like the modern ones, but very good women were reared under them, and they are not quite out of date. I would like to see them put in practise oftener.”
Fan blushed vividly at the beginning of Miss Churchill’s sentence. I wondered a little why?
“And now I must go,” declared Miss Churchill rising. “I always get fascinated when I come here, and stay beyond reasonable limits. When your charming nest becomes over-crowded, Mrs. Endicott, I will be glad to take one birdie. You won’t forget the list, Mr. Endicott?”
“No, indeed. I shall be thankful for so good a helper.”