when
need comes, they all offer themselves as teachers. They undertake one
of the most difficult and arduous pursuits as if it were as simple as
washing up dishes. We can't earn money in any other way, but we can
teach children! A man only becomes a schoolmaster or tutor when he has
gone through laborious preparation--anything but wise or adequate, of
course, but still conscious preparation; and only a very few men,
comparatively, choose that line of work. Women must have just as wide a
choice.'

'That's plausible, cousin Mary. But remember that when a man chooses
his calling he chooses it for life. A girl cannot but remember that if
she marries her calling at once changes. The old business is thrown
aside--henceforth profitless.'

'No. Not henceforth profitless! There's the very point I insist upon.
So far is it from profitless, that it has made her a wholly different
woman from what she would otherwise have been. Instead of a moping,
mawkish creature, with--in most instances--a very unhealthy mind, she
is a complete human being. She stands on an equality with the man. He
can't despise her as he now does.'

'Very good,' assented Everard, observing Miss Nunn's satisfied smile.
'I like that view very much. But what about the great number of girls
who are claimed by domestic duties? Do you abandon them, with a
helpless sigh, to be moping and mawkish and unhealthy?'

'In the first place, there needn't be a great number of unmarried women
claimed by such duties. Most of those you are thinking of are not
fulfilling a duty at all; they are only pottering about the house,
because they have nothing better to do. And when the whole course of
female education is altered; when girls are trained as a matter of
course to some definite pursuit; then those who really are obliged to
remain at home will do their duty there in quite a different spirit.
Home work will be their serious business, instead of a disagreeable
drudgery, or a way of getting through the time till marriage offers. I
would have no girl, however wealthy her parent, grow up without a
profession. There should be no such thing as a class of females
vulgarized by the necessity of finding daily amusement.'

'Nor of males either, of course,' put in Everard, stroking his beard.

'Nor of males either, cousin Everard.'

'You thoroughly approve all this, Miss Nunn?'

'Oh yes. But I go further. I would have girls taught that marriage is a
thing to be avoided rather t