e disinclined to
accept truths second-hand, insist on thinking for herself, be earnest in
her desire to shake off exploded traditions, be untiring in her efforts
to live according to a high moral standard and to be strong, and pure,
and good--"

"Like tea," explained Irais.

"--yet will she never, with all her virtues, possess one-thousandth part
of the charm that clung about her when she sang, with quiet eyelids, her
first reluctant hymns, kneeling on her mother's knees. I love to come in
at bed-time and sit in the window in the setting sunshine watching the
mysteries of her going to bed. Her mother tubs her, for she is far too
precious to be touched by any nurse, and then she is rolled up in a
big bath towel, and only her little pink toes peep out; and when she is
powdered, and combed, and tied up in her night-dress, and all her curls
are on end, and her ears glowing, she is knelt down on her mother's lap,
a little bundle of fragrant flesh, and her face reflects the quiet of
her mother's face as she goes through her evening prayer for pity and
for peace."

"How very curious!" said Minora, when she had finished. "That is exactly
what I was going to say."

"Oh, then I have saved you the trouble of putting it together; you can
copy that if you like." "But have you a stale soul, Miss Minora?" I
asked.

"Well, do you know, I rather think that is a good touch," she replied;
"it will make people really think a man wrote the book. You know I am
going to take a man's name."

"That is precisely what I imagined," said Irais. "You will call yourself
John Jones, or George Potts, or some such sternly commonplace name, to
emphasise your uncompromising attitude towards all feminine weaknesses,
and no one will be taken in."

"I really think, Elizabeth," said Irais to me later, when the click of
Minora's typewriter was heard hesitating in the next room, "that you and
I are writing her book for her. She takes down everything we say. Why
does she copy all that about the baby? I wonder why mothers' knees are
supposed to be touching? I never learned anything at them, did you? But
then in my case they were only stepmother's, and nobody ever sings their
praises."

"My mother was always at parties," I said; "and the nurse made me say my
prayers in French."

"And as for tubs and powder," went on Irais, "when I was a baby such
things were not the fashion. There were never any bathrooms, and no
tubs; our faces and hands were washed,