He gave her more advice as they walked and talked together, and she
listened to him submissively, and became interested in what he said to
her.

"I should like to make myself useful in some way," she said. "I don't
want to spend all my life amusing myself or even improving myself."

"Oh, improving yourself! That's not quite the way to put it. Expressing
yourself--that's what you want to do--what everybody ought to do. And
look here, my dear, when you say you want to make yourself useful--I
suppose you mean hospital nursing or something of that sort, eh?"

Cicely laughed. "I have thought of that," she said.

"Well then, don't think of it any more. It's not the way--at least not
for you. You make yourself useful when you make yourself loved. That's a
woman's sphere, and I don't care if all the suffragettes in the country
hear me say it. A woman ought to be loved in one way or another by
everybody around her; and if she is, then she's doing more in the world
than ninety-nine men out of a hundred. Men want opportunities. Every
woman has them already. Somebody is dependent on her, and the more the
better for her--and the world. What would your old aunts do without you,
or your mother, or indeed anybody in the place? They would all miss you,
every one. Don't run away with the idea you're not wanted. Of course
you're wanted. _We_ want you, only we can't have you because they want
you here."

"You give me a better conceit of myself," she said gratefully.

"Keep it, my dear, keep it," said Mr. Birket. "The better conceit we
have of ourselves the more we accomplish. Now I think we'd better be
turning back."

CHAPTER XI

A WEDDING

The London newspapers devoted small space, if any, to the wedding of
Walter Clinton, Esq., M.D., third son of Edward Clinton, Esq., of
Kencote, Meadshire, and Muriel, only daughter of the late Alexander
Graham, Esq., and the Honourable Mrs. Graham of Mountfield, Meadshire,
but the _Bathgate Herald and South Meadshire Advertiser_ devoted two of
its valuable columns to a description of the ceremony, a list of the
distinguished guests present, and a catalogue of the wedding presents.
No name that could possibly be included was left out. The confectioner
who supplied the cake, the head gardeners at Kencote and Mountfield
who--obligingly--supplied the floral decorations; the organist who
presided, as organists always do, at the organ, and gave a rendering, a
very inefficient one, of Men