So, she remembered, had she felt once before in her life, when Nature's voice first called to her to leave her dolls and playthings and begin to prepare herself for her life's work.
How well she remembered that day, when first the scales of childhood had fallen from her eyes, and her dolls, formerly living things, had been seen for the first time as they were: bits of rag and wood and stone. How she remembered the keen wonder she had felt, the astonishment that she could play no more!
Then had come the period of fierce intelligence, the appetite and desire for work, the longing to know and to expand the brain. For since Nature has made woman to be not only the mother but the nurse of the child, and it is the mother's brain and not the father's that is transmitted to the child, she gives to the female, with the first development of sex, this sharp desire for knowledge, for learning, for mental endowment, so that it may be duly passed on to the offspring. Hence that overwhelming thirst for mental work, for study, which is so common in the developing girl for these few years in her life, so unusual in the male, who rarely learns, except for material and worldly considerations. And as Nature's voice had peremptorily called her from her playthings, and forced her to her studies, so now, her time for study being over, Nature again summoned her to leave her accomplished duties, and prepare herself for the new ones in store for her.
Nature was strong in Regina; she was its child. The cramped artifices of civilisation had not got hold of her and stifled out of her the breath of Nature. So after a time she abandoned all work, finding it impossible, and sat gazing out of the window, thinking.
At luncheon, Everest, having quite made up his mind as to his afternoon's programme, which was to include other items besides the Delamere call, took comparatively little notice of Regina, and talked chiefly to the Rector on model cottages, and their morning's inspection.
The Rector delightedly expounded his views, which seemed to Everest to have for their aim the increasing dependence of the poor upon the rich, the incompetent upon the capable, the weak and idle upon the strong and industrious, and the undermining of what thrift the poor possessed by removing the urgent necessity for it.
The model cottages were to be practically free, with only a nominal rent; old people were to be kept by the parish; sick people were to be tended gratis; young people were to be encouraged to marry early and bring into the world large families for their neighbours to keep; chance immorality was to be avoided at all costs, and punished mercilessly; large broods of infants, no matter from what drunken, vicious, idle parents, were to be favoured and cared for out of the money of the honest and sober, provided only the brood was born in wedlock, and the father and mother had the sanction of the Church.
Finally he gleefully totted up the subscriptions he had dragged out of the unwilling hands of the hard-working and thrifty portion of the villagers, for his doors, his windows, his model baths, his new sinks, and only lamented that he was still short a hundred pounds for finishing the hearths.
Everest, to whom this exposition of views had been intensely repellent, felt relieved that the point of asking for charity, up to which he felt sure the Rector was slowly working, had been reached at last, and said immediately:
"Oh, well, you must count on me for the remaining hundred for the fireplaces. I will give you the cheque after luncheon."