"Isn't that a simile for you?"
"Very," said Louise; and her husband glanced at her curiously. What was she thinking of, and how did that brief "very" fit in with Leontes' wonderful simile?
"Well," he said, "are your thimbles and pins and things all ready, wife? Shall I commence?"
"Not just yet, dear; I want to talk. What do you think about it; was she disappointed at not having better opportunities?"
"Who? Oh, Dorothy! I thought you were talking about Hermione; she fainted, you know. Yes, Dorothy was disappointed. She wanted to go to the academy in town, and she ought to have had the opportunity, but we couldn't bring it to pass. I was at home but a few weeks, or I might have accomplished more. What is the trouble, Louise dear? How does it happen that you find poor Dorothy more interesting than Shakespeare to-night?"
"Well," said Louise, laughing, "it is true; I cannot get away from her; her life seems so forlorn, somehow. I can't help being sorry for her. She is losing her girlhood almost before it is time for it to bloom. I have been wondering and wondering all day what there was that we could do for her; and I find the real life being worked out before our eyes so engrossing, that it is hard to come back to the dead lives of Shakespeare."
Her husband closed the book, putting his finger between the leaves to mark the place.
"I have studied that problem somewhat, Louise," he said earnestly, "in the days gone by. I didn't succeed in making much of it. It is true, as you say, that she is slipping away from girlhood, almost without knowing that she has been a girl. Sometimes I think that she will have only two experiences of life—childhood and old womanhood. Mother cannot realize that she is yet any more than a child, to be governed, and to obey; and one of these mornings it will be discovered that she is no longer a child, but has passed middle life. Her future looks somewhat dreary to me, I confess."
"We must not let it grow dreary," Louise said, with a determined tone, and a positive setting of her small foot—a curious habit that she had when very much in earnest. "What sense is there in it? She is young, and in good health, and has a sound brain; why should she not make her life what it ought to be? Why shouldn't we help her in a hundred ways?"
"Yes; but come down to actual, practical truth. What is there that she can do for herself, or that we can do for her? You see, Louise, our family is peculiar; there is no use in shutting one's eyes to that fact. It is not because father is a farmer that we find ourselves situated just as we are; other farmers have very different experiences. We are surrounded on all sides with men who get their living by cultivating the fields, whose sons and daughters are in college, or seminary, and in society, and who, in every way, take as good a position, and have as many advantages, as town-bred people—at the expense, it is true, of some inconvenience and special labour. Of course, it is also true that some of the sons and daughters do not choose to accept all the advantages for cultivation; and equally, of course, there are some who are unable to furnish the means for what they would like their children to enjoy; but no greater proportion of that class in the country than in town, I think. My father does not belong to any of these classes; he is, as I said, peculiar."