"I wish I could believe that Ma's temper would be an advantage to me," Ethel Maud Mary said, sighing; "she's that wearing! But there, poor dear! she's sick, and there's no keeping the worries from her. There's only you and Mr. Brock in the house just now that pays up to the day, so you may guess what it is! He's getting on nicely now, I suppose; but you shouldn't be sitting here in the cold. A shawl don't make the difference; it's the air you breathe; and you ought to have your oil-stove going. Isn't the fire enough for him? I can't think so many degrees it need be in his room always, when there's no degree at all in yours."
"Oh, I'm hardy," said Beth. "I never was better."
"You look it," Ethel Maud Mary said sarcastically, "like a pauper just out of prison. What are you worrying about?"
"Beef-tea," said Beth. And so she was, and bread and butter, fuel, light, and lodging—everything, in fact, that meant money; for the money was all but done, and she had had a shock on the subject lately that had shaken her considerably.
She had spread out a newspaper to save the carpet, and was kneeling on the floor, one morning, in front of the window, cleaning and filling the little oil-stove, and Arthur was lying contentedly watching her—"superintending her domestic duties," he used to call it, that being all that he was equal to in his extreme weakness just then.
"You're a notable housekeeper," he said. "I shouldn't have expected you from your appearance to be able to cook and clean as you do."
"I used to do this kind of thing as a child to help a lazy servant we had, bless her," Beth answered. "The cooking and cleaning she taught me have stood me in good stead."
"If you had a daughter, how would you bring her up?" he asked.
Beth opened the piece of paper with which she was cleaning the oil off the stove, and regarded it thoughtfully. "I would bring her up in happy seclusion, to begin with," she said. "She should have all the joys of childhood; and then an education calculated to develop all her intellectual powers without forcing them, and at the same time to fit her for a thoroughly normal woman's life: childhood, girlhood, wifehood, motherhood, each with its separate duties and pleasures all complete. I would have her happy in each, steadfast, prudent, self-possessed, methodical, economical; and if she had the capacity for any special achievement, I think that such an education would have developed the strength of purpose and self-respect necessary to carry it through. I would also have her to know thoroughly the world that she has to live in, so that she might be ready to act with discretion in any emergency. I should, in fact, want to fit her for whatever might befall her, and then leave her in confidence to shape her own career. The life for a woman to long for—and a man too, I think—is a life of simple duties and simple pleasures, a normal life; but I only call that life normal which is suited to the requirements of the woman's individual temperament."
"You don't clamour for more liberty, then?"