"You are an angel, and will never be anything else to me," I responded, stroking her hair.
She lay still for a moment, happy but pensive. "She shall do whatever she pleases; only it is a very much easier matter for you to be virtuous and to say, 'Let her study medicine,' than for me."
"I have not said so, dearest."
"You have thought so, though. You do not need to speak to have me know when you are thinking things. No man can possibly conceive what it means to a mother to have a daughter a radiant beauty and peculiar."
"I dare say not," I murmured, humbly.
"Especially," she continued, reflectively, "when you consider that, though society is foolish, there is really nothing else at present to take its place to give a girl what nothing else is likely to give her—I do not say nothing else can give it to her, but nothing else is in the least likely to; and when you consider the vast number of wives and mothers who have been through it all when they were young, and are charming and—yes, Fred, sensible, intelligent women to-day. I don't pretend that I myself am half what I might have been, but I went through it all as a girl without becoming absolutely vapid and volatile. Didn't I, dear?"
"You certainly did, Josephine. If Winona turns out your equal I shall be more than satisfied."
"Thank you, dear, but you mustn't say it. I do wish her to have more mind. My mind was more or less neglected; but, on the other hand, Fred, I never had the opportunity to be peculiar, for there was no chance to be in those days. Now the disease is liable to break out in any family. All we can do, Fred, is to remember that we are growing old, and to trust that the world of to-day is wiser than we."
"Amen!" I murmured.
And yet the consciousness that Josephine passed through it all and is what she is, makes me feel a little doubtful still on the score of the new dispensation, in spite of the mushrooms with rich gray gravy.