“Nothing has gone wrong, I hope, mother?” queried Emma.
“Nothing at all, my dear Lady Thoughtful,” was the smiling reply.
“Dear Lady Owl, you mean!” cried saucy Blanche, and she went off singing:—
“And what says the old gray owl?
To who? To who?”
“Happy children!” Mrs. Hiller heaved a confidential sigh to the fire that had shone on the young faces a moment ago. “Will what I have to tell them make them less happy or gay? Is mine, after all, the needless croak of the owl instead of a wise warning?”
The thought pierced her again, next day, when they met in her boudoir, eager and curious, their eyes and cheeks unmarred by the moderate dissipation of the preceding night. But she stood fast to her purpose; unfolded her scheme in bulk and detail, with the assured tone of one who had considered the cost to the last farthing. She was not accounted an eccentric woman by her acquaintances, but her proposal was novel, and, to her listeners, startling. Their days of school-study were over, she reminded them. It was time that upon the foundation of general information thus laid should be erected the superstructure of a profession.
“A specialty, if you prefer the word,” she said; “since I earnestly hope you will not be called upon to practice it for a livelihood. While papa’s strength and health last, he finds no more delightful use for his earnings than to purchase comfort and luxury for us. Were he to die, or to be unfortunate in business, or become incurably diseased—and such things are of almost daily occurrence—our style of living would be at once and entirely altered. You would be driven to the study of small, minute economies and false appearances, such as must rasp and narrow the souls of those who resort to them; to escape these by a marriage of convenience, or the lucky accident of a love-match, or to engage, in earnest, in some business that would, thanks to your previous training, continue to you the elegancies, with the decencies of life.”
This was the preamble to an abstract of the conversation with her husband, the troubled reverie and calculations that succeeded it.
“Of artists in music and painting, there are, perhaps, twenty in this city,” she observed. “Of pretenders and drudges in these arts, there are more than a thousand. Since not one of you has developed any decided talent for such pursuits, or for literature, and, since teaching for a living has become but another name for bondage and starvation, my plan is this: You, Emma, shall learn bookkeeping; Imogen, dressmaking; Blanche, millinery. Don’t look horrified! I shall not expose you to the uncongenial associations or unwholesome atmosphere of the crowded shop or work-room. All that affection and money can do to make the term of your novitiate pleasant shall be done. You shall fit up the old nursery as your academy of the useful arts, if you choose to call it by so dignified a name. I shall engage competent instructors for you and pay well for the lessons. But there must be no play-work, no superficial, amateur performance on either side. When your trades are learned, I shall expect you to keep yourselves in practice, and up with the latest improvements and fashions by practice in domestic manufactures. Milliners’ and dressmakers’ bills shall be among the things that were. Emma shall have charge of the housekeeping accounts and papa’s books. He will pay her as he would any other skilful accountant, and what you, Imogen and Blanche, shall adjudge to be a reasonable price for every dress and bonnet made for yourselves, your sister, or for me.”