lk and vain show," said Flora languidly.
"Are you come to their defence, Ethel? If you could guess how sick one
gets of them, and how much worse it is for them not to be hateful!
And to think of bringing my poor little girl up to the like, if she is
spared!"

"If they are not duties, I would not do them," said Ethel.

"Ethel," cried her sister, raising herself from her couch eagerly, "I
will say it to you! What should you think of George resigning his seat,
and living in peace here?"

"Would he?" said Ethel.

"If I wished it."

"But what would he do with himself?" said Ethel, not in too
complimentary a strain.

"Yachting, farming, Cochin-Chinese--or something," said Flora. "Anything
not so wearing as this!"

"That abominable candidate of Tomkins's would come in!" exclaimed Ethel.
"Oh, Flora, that would be horrid!"

"That might be guarded against," said Flora. "Perhaps Sir Henry--But oh!
let us leave politics in peace while we can. I thought we should do some
great good, but it is all a maze of confusion. It is so hard to know
principles from parties, and everything goes wrong! It is of no use to
contend with it!"

"It is never vain to contend with evil," said Ethel.

"We are not generalising," said Flora. "There is evil nearer home
than the state of parties, and I can't see that George's being in
Parliament--being what he is--is anything like the benefit to things
in general--that it is temptation and plague to me, besides the risk of
London life for the baby, now and hereafter."

"I can't say that I think it is," said Ethel. "How nice it would be to
have you here! I am so glad you are willing to give it up."

"It would have been better to have given it up untasted--like Norman,"
sighed Flora. "I will talk to George."

"But, Flora," said Ethel, a little startled, "you ought not to do such a
thing without advice."

"There will be worry enough before it is done!" sighed Flora. "No fear
of that!"

"Stop a minute," said Ethel, as if poor Flora could have done anything
but lie still on her sofa. "I think you ought to consider well before
you set it going."

"Have not I longed for it day and night? It is an escape from peril for
ourselves and our child."

"I can't be sure!" said Ethel. "It may be more wrong to make George
desert the post which--"

"Which I thrust him into," said Flora. "My father told me as much."

"I did not mean you to say that! But it is a puzzle. It seems as if it
were right to