with solemn happiness to the Chapel to praise God
in their own small companies, or going with hidden feet through the
great City to nurse the sick and to comfort those who had no other
comforter than God--to pray in a quiet place, and not to be afraid any
more or doubtful or despised...! These things she saw and her heart
leaped to them, and of these things she spoke to her mother, who
listened with a tender smile and stroked her hair and hands. But her
mother did not approve of these things. She spoke of nuns with
reverence and affection. Many a gentle, sweet woman had she known of
that sisterhood, many a one before whom she could have abased herself
with tears and love, but such a life of shelter and restraint could
never have been hers, nor did she believe it could be Mary's. For her
a woman's business was life, the turmoil and strife of it was good to
be in, it was a cleansing and a bracing. God did not need any
assistance, but man did, bitterly he wanted it, and the giving of
such assistance was the proper business of a woman. Everywhere there
was a man to be helped, and the quest of a woman was to find the man
who most needed her aid, and having found him to cleave to him
forever. In most of the trouble of life she divined men and women not
knowing or not doing their duty, which was to love one another and to
be neighborly and obliging to their fellows. A partner, a home and
children--through the loyal co-operation of these she saw happiness
and, dimly, a design of so vast an architecture as scarcely to be
discussed. The bad and good of humanity moved her to an equal ecstasy
of displeasure and approbation, but her God was Freedom and her
religion Love. Freedom! even the last rags of it that remain to a
regimented world! That was a passion with her. She must order her
personal life without any ghostly or bodily supervision. She would
oppose an encroachment on that with her nails and her teeth; and this
last fringe of freedom was what nuns had sacrificed and all servants
and other people had bartered away. One must work, but one must never
be a slave--these laws seemed to her equally imperative; the structure
of the world swung upon them, and whoever violated these laws was a
traitor to both God and man.

But Mary did not say anything. Her mother's arms were around her, and
suddenly she commenced to cry upon a bosom that was not strange. There
was surely healing in that breast of love, a rampart of tenderness
again