position tends to develop certain quite trifling defects of character
for which Lalage will be an almost certain cure."

"You don't know Miss Pettigrew."

"No, I don't. That's the reason I'm trying not to talk of her. What I'm
considering and what you ought to be considering is the effect of Lalage
on the other girls. Think of those nice, innocent young creatures, fresh
from their sheltered homes----"

"My dear boy," said my mother, "what on earth do you know about little
girls?"

"Nothing," I said, "but I've always been led to believe that they are
sweet and innocent."

"Let me tell you then," said my mother, "that Lalage has a career of
real usefulness before her in that school. Most girls of her age are
inclined to be sentimental and occasionally priggish. Lalage will do
them all the good in the world."

I wonder why it is that so many able women have an incurably low
opinion of their own sex? My mother would not say things like that about
schoolboys, though they are at least equally sentimental and most of
them more priggish. She is extremely kind to people like Miss Battersby,
although she regards them as pitiably incompetent when their cosmetics
are used on stable-boys. Yet she would not despise me or regard it as my
fault if some one took my shaving soap and washed a kitchen maid's face
with it.

"So," I said, "Lalage is to go forth as a missionary of anarchy, a
ravening wolf into the midst of a sheepfold."

"The Archdeacon was saying to me this morning," said my mother, "that if
you----"

"May I interrupt you one moment?" I said. "I understood that the
Archdeacon was in Dublin."

"This," said my mother, "is another of the things which the Archdeacon
would have said if he had been at home."

"Oh," I said, "in that case I should particularly like to hear it."

"He said, or would have said, that if you allow your habit of flippant
talking to grow on you you'll lose all hold on the solemn realities of
life and become a totally useless member of society."

"I quite admit," I said, "that the Archdeacon would have put it in
pretty nearly those words if he had said it. I particularly admire that
part about the solemn realities of life. But the Archdeacon's a just man
and he would not have made a remark of that kind. He knows the facts.
I hold a commission in the militia, which is one of the armed forces of
the Crown; auxiliary is, I think, the word properly applied to it. I am
a justice of the peace and