mprehending child, precocious, as they say, and quick-witted, and
she's been watching your career, ma'am, just as clost as you could
yourself. And the day you was admitted she come home,--a friend of hers
gave her the afternoon paper,--and she says, 'Mother,' she says, 'Mrs.
Tarbell is admitted!'--just like it was a personal friend of yours, Mrs.
Tarbell; and reely, ma'am, I suppose I oughtn't to say it, but there's
been a good many women all over this country felt themselves personal
friends of yours, ma'am, knowing how much there was meant by your
success and feeling how near the question come to themselves; and if
good wishes brings good luck, that's what you have to thank for
succeeding. But Celandine she's an ambitious girl, Mrs, Tarbell, and the
long and the short of it is just this, that she's set her heart on being
a lawyer, and she's either too shy or too proud, mebbe, to come here
with me to speak to you, ma'am: so I just put on my bunnit the first day
I could, rain or shine, and rain it's turned out to be, to say a word to
you about her and just ask you what you _thought_."

"A lawyer?" gasped Mrs. Tarbell.

"Yes, ma'am; a lady lawyer."

Mrs. Tarbell had never a word to say. In spite of having triumphed over
all the arguments, both those epicene and those particularly masculine,
which had been used against herself, she had not now the strength of
mind to use them in her turn. In spite of being a lawyer, she had a
conscience. She had looked forward to taking students, but they were all
to have been Portias, every woman Jane of them; and before her own
learning was fairly dry (which I think an eminently proper adjective to
describe legal learning) there appeared to her an obviously
crack-brained old party in an india-rubber cloak, who kept a candy-store
and wanted her daughter to become a lawyer. No wonder Mrs. Tarbell was
embarrassed. Was she to say to the crack-brained one, "Madam, pay me one
hundred dollars per annum and I will take your daughter as a student"?
On the other hand, how in the name of that Orloff, that Pitt, that
Kohinoor diamond among precious virtues, consistency, was she to go so
far as even to hint to Mrs. Stiles that any woman couldn't be a lawyer?
As Mrs. Tarbell hesitated, she began to fear she was lost.

"Celandine is a real bright girl," said Mrs. Stiles, who had now
regained her breath. Was this the woman who had knocked so timidly at
the door? "Celandine is a _real_ bright girl; h