ird I, a child of Pan--an ugly little
beast, Mrs. Kelver; horns on head and hoofs on feet, leering through the
wood, seeking its fit mate. And a fourth would wed a wholesome, homely
wench, deep of bosom, broad of hip; fit mother of a sturdy brood. A
fifth could only be content with a true friend, a comrade wise and
witty, a sharer and understander of all joys and thoughts and feelings.
And a last, Mrs. Kelver, yearns for a woman pure and sweet, clothed in
love and crowned with holiness. Shouldn't we be a handful, Mrs. Kelver,
for any one woman in an eight-roomed house?"

But my mother was not to be discouraged. "You will find the woman one
day, Hal, who will be all of them to you--all of them that are worth
having, that is. And your eight-roomed house will be a kingdom!"

"A man is many, and a woman but one," answered Hal.

"That is what men say who are too blind to see more than one side of a
woman," retorted my mother, a little sharply; for the honour and credit
of her own sex in all things was very dear to my mother. And indeed this
I have learned, that the flag of Womanhood you shall ever find upheld by
all true women, flouted only by the false. For a judge in petticoats is
ever but a witness in a wig.

Hal laid aside his pipe and leant forward in his chair. "Now tell us,
Mrs. Kelver, for our guidance, we two young bachelors, what must the
lover of a young girl be?"

Always very serious on this subject of love, my mother answered gravely:
"She asks for the whole of a man, Hal, not merely for a sixth, nor any
other part of him. She is a child asking for a lover to whom she can
look up, who will teach her, guide her, protect her. She is a queen
demanding homage, and yet he is her king whom it is her joy to serve.
She asks to be his partner, his fellow-worker, his playmate, and at the
same time she loves to think of him as her child, her big baby she must
take care of. Whatever he has to give she has also to respond with. You
need not marry six wives, Hal; you will find your six in one.

"'As the water to the vessel, woman shapes herself to man;' an old
heathen said that three thousand years ago, and others have repeated
him; that is what you mean."

"I don't like that way of putting it," answered my mother. "I mean that
as you say of man, so in every true woman is contained all women. But to
know her completely you must love her with all love."

Sometimes the talk would be of religion, for my mother's faith wa