emed as if the
real things had opened for her, and a place been made among them in
which she should have "business to be," and from which her life
might make a new setting forth.

"And mamma knows?" she said, inquiringly, after that long pause.

"Yes. I told you I would talk with her. That is what we came to. It
is only for you to say, now."

"I will come. I shall be glad to come!" And her face was full of
light as she looked up and said it.

* * * * *

Desire never thought for a moment of what her mother could not help
thinking of; of what Mrs. Megilp thought and said, instantly, when
she learned it three weeks later.

It is wonderful how abiding influence is,--even influence to which
we are secretly superior,--if ever we have been subjected to, or
allowed ourselves to be swayed by it. The veriest tyranny of
discipline grows into one's conscience, until years after, when life
has got beyond the tyranny, conscience,--or something superinduced
upon it,--keeps up the echo of the old mandates, and one can take no
comfort in doing what one knows all the time one has a perfect
right, besides sound reason, to do. It was a great while before our
grandmothers' daughters could peaceably stitch and overcast a seam,
instead of over-sewing and felling it. I know women who feel to this
moment as if to sit down and read a book of a week-day, in the
daytime, were playing truant to the needle, though all the
sewing-machines on the one hand, and all the demand and supply of
mental culture on the other, of this present changed and bettered
time, protest together against the absurdity.

Mrs. Ledwith had heard the Megilp precepts and the Megilp
forth-putting of things, until involuntarily everything showed
itself to her in a Megilp light. The Megilp "sense of duty,"
therefore, came up as she unhesitatingly assented to Uncle Oldways'
proposal and request. He wanted Desire; of course she could not say
a word; she owed him something, which she was glad she could so make
up; and secretly there whispered in her mind the suggestion which
Mrs. Megilp, on the other side of the water, spoke right out.

"If he wants her, he must mean something by her. He is an old man;
he might not live to give her back into her mother's keeping; what
would she do there, in that old house of his, if he should die,
unless--he _does_ mean something? He has taken a fancy to her; she
is odd, as he is; and he isn't so queer after