of their teeth, it is true.
And I have heard young women talk quite openly of--"

"Dreadful, dreadful!" exclaimed Mrs. Elliot. "The crown, as one may call
it, of a woman's life. I, who know what it is to be childless--" she
sighed and ceased.

"But we must not be hard," said Mrs. Thornbury. "The conditions are so
much changed since I was a young woman."

"Surely _maternity_ does not change," said Mrs. Elliot.

"In some ways we can learn a great deal from the young," said Mrs.
Thornbury. "I learn so much from my own daughters."

"I believe that Hughling really doesn't mind," said Mrs. Elliot. "But
then he has his work."

"Women without children can do so much for the children of others,"
observed Mrs. Thornbury gently.

"I sketch a great deal," said Mrs. Elliot, "but that isn't really an
occupation. It's so disconcerting to find girls just beginning doing
better than one does oneself! And nature's difficult--very difficult!"

"Are there not institutions--clubs--that you could help?" asked Mrs.
Thornbury.

"They are so exhausting," said Mrs. Elliot. "I look strong, because of
my colour; but I'm not; the youngest of eleven never is."

"If the mother is careful before," said Mrs. Thornbury judicially,
"there is no reason why the size of the family should make any
difference. And there is no training like the training that brothers and
sisters give each other. I am sure of that. I have seen it with my own
children. My eldest boy Ralph, for instance--"

But Mrs. Elliot was inattentive to the elder lady's experience, and her
eyes wandered about the hall.

"My mother had two miscarriages, I know," she said suddenly. "The first
because she met one of those great dancing bears--they shouldn't be
allowed; the other--it was a horrid story--our cook had a child and
there was a dinner party. So I put my dyspepsia down to that."

"And a miscarriage is so much worse than a confinement," Mrs. Thornbury
murmured absentmindedly, adjusting her spectacles and picking up _The_
_Times_. Mrs. Elliot rose and fluttered away.

When she had heard what one of the million voices speaking in the paper
had to say, and noticed that a cousin of hers had married a clergyman at
Minehead--ignoring the drunken women, the golden animals of Crete,
the movements of battalions, the dinners, the reforms, the fires, the
indignant, the learned and benevolent, Mrs. Thornbury went upstairs to
write a letter for the mail.

The paper lay directly