"You will admit, however, that the man bird is doing the best he can."
"Oh, yes, I have a broad charity for all of his kind."
"Well, I am one of his kind, and so shall take heart and bask in your general good-will. Stop your noise, old fellow, and go and tell your wife that she may come home to the children. I differ from you, Miss Warren, as I foresee I often shall. You are not matter-of-fact at all. You are unconventional, unique—" "Why not say queer, and give your meaning in good plain English?"
"Because that is not my meaning. I fear you are worse—that you are romantic. Moreover, I am told that girls who dote on love in a cottage all marry rich men if the chance comes." She bit her lip, colored, and seemed annoyed, but said, after a moment's hesitation, "Well, why shouldn't they, if the rich men are the right men?"
"Oh, I think such a course eminently proper and thrifty. I'm not finding fault with it in the least. They who do this are a little inconsistent, however, in shunning so carefully that ideal cottage, over which, as young ladies, they had mild and poetic raptures. Now, I can't associate this kind of thing with you. If you had 'drawings or leadings,' as Mrs. Yocomb would say, toward a Fifth Avenue mansion, you would say so in effect. I fear you are romantic, and are under the delusion that love in a cottage means happiness. You have a very honest face, and you looked into that nest as if you liked it."
"Mr. Morton," she said, frowning and laughing at the same time, "I'm not going to be argued out of self-consciousness. If we don't know what we know, we don't know anything. I insist upon it that I am utterly matter-of-fact in my opinions on this question. State the subject briefly in prose. Does a family exist for the sake of a home, or a home for the sake of a family? I know of many instances in which the former of these suppositions is true. The father toils and wears himself out, often gambles—speculating, some call it—and not unfrequently cheats and steals outright in order to keep up his establishment. The mother works and worries, smooths her wrinkled brow to curious visitors, burdens her soul with innumerable deceits, and enslaves herself that her house and its belongings may be as good or a little better than her neighbor's. The children soon catch the same spirit, and their souls become absorbed in wearing apparel. They are complacently ignorant concerning topics of general interest and essential culture, but would be mortified to death if suspected of being a little off on 'good form' and society's latest whims in mode. It is a dreary thraldom to mere things in which the soul becomes as material, narrow, and hard as the objects which absorb it. There is no time for that which gives ideality and breadth."
"Do you realize that your philosophy would stop half the industries of the world? Do you not believe in large and sumptuously furnished houses?"
"Yes, for those who have large incomes. One may live in a palace, and yet not be a slave to the palace. Our home should be as beautiful as our taste and means can make it; but, like the nest yonder, it should simply serve its purpose, leaving us the time and means to get all the good out of the world at large that we can."
A sudden cloud of sadness overcast her face as she continued, after a moment, half in soliloquy:
"The robins will soon take wing and leave the nest; so must we. How many have gone already!"