k hair and smoothed it in preposterous bands on
either side of her brow. Her arms hung stiff and perpendicular, and
she fidgeted with her short skirt as she advanced.

Captain Runacles stopped short in his walk and surveyed her.

"H'm," he said. "Don't shuffle."

The little girl looked up, dropped her eyes again quickly, and let
her hands hang limp beside her. She was shaking from head to foot.

"You are a girl."

"Pardon, father," she mumbled in a low whisper.

"Next door there lives a small boy. You are in the habit of putting
out your tongue at him. Why?"

"I--I--"

Her voice wavered and she broke into a fit of sobbing.

"Tut, tut! Stop that noise; I haven't scolded you. On the contrary,
I sent for you in the hope that you might always be able to put out
your tongue at that boy. Sophia, dry your eyes and attend, please.
Would you like to be an accomplished woman?"

"If it please you, father."

"Now may the devil fly away with the whole sex! If they _do_ happen
to desire anything good in itself, it's always to please some man or
another. Sophia, I ask you if, for your own sake, and for the sake
of knowledge, you will be my pupil; if you care to pursue--" Captain
Runacles checked himself, not because he had any idea that he was
talking over the head of a girl of seven, but because a general
proposition had occurred to him.

"Woman's notion of a pursuit," he said, clasping his hands behind him
and regarding his daughter's tear-stained face with severity--
"woman's notion of a pursuit is entirely passive. Her only idea is
to be pursued, and even so her mind runs on ultimate capture.
Sophia," he continued, himself forgetting for the moment his view of
knowledge as _sui causa optandum_, "would you like to please me by
licking that boy across the hedge into a cocked-hat?"

"But--oh, father!"

"What is it?"

She could not answer for a moment. Nor did he know that she besought
God every night to change her into a boy that she might find some
grace in his sight.

"You have one advantage," said her father coldly, as she struggled to
keep down her tears. "Your rival across the hedge is in a fair way to
be turned into a fool. We will begin to-morrow. In a week or so I
shall be able to pronounce some opinion on your capacity. Now run
indoors to your nurse--why, bless my soul!"

The child had trotted forward, and, taking his hand, kissed it
passionately. He looked into her face, and, finding