e price; the town prophesied well of it. That left only five at
home, but they always had Abby over in the West Ward, where Abby's
housekeeping made an interest and Abby's baby a point of pilgrimage.
These considerations almost consoled Mrs Murchison declaring, as she
did, that all of them might have gone but Abby, who alone knew how to be
"any comfort or any dependence" in the house; who could be left with a
day's preserving; and I tell you that to be left by Mrs Murchison with a
day's preserving, be it cherries or strawberries, damsons or pears, was
a mark of confidence not easy to obtain. Advena never had it; Advena,
indeed, might have married and removed no prop of the family economy.
Mrs Murchison would have been "sorry for the man"--she maintained
a candour toward and about those belonging to her that permitted no
illusions--but she would have stood cheerfully out of the way on her
own account. When you have seen your daughter reach and pass the age
of twenty-five without having learned properly to make her own bed, you
know without being told that she will never be fit for the management of
a house--don't you? Very well then. And for ever and for ever, no matter
what there was to do, with a book in her hand--Mrs Murchison would put
an emphasis on the "book" which scarcely concealed a contempt for such
absorption. And if, at the end of your patience, you told her for any
sake to put it down and attend to matters, obeying in a kind of dream
that generally drove you to take the thing out of her hands and do it
yourself, rather than jump out of your skin watching her.

Sincerely Mrs Murchison would have been sorry for the man if he had
arrived, but he had not arrived. Advena justified her existence by
taking the university course for women at Toronto, and afterward
teaching the English branches to the junior forms in the Collegiate
Institute, which placed her arbitrarily outside the sphere of domestic
criticism. Mrs Murchison was thankful to have her there--outside--where
little more could reasonably be expected of her than that she should
be down in time for breakfast. It is so irritating to be justified
in expecting more than seems likely to come. Mrs Murchison's ideas
circulated strictly in the orbit of equity and reason; she expected
nothing from anybody that she did not expect from herself; indeed, she
would spare others in far larger proportion. But the sense of obligation
which led her to offer herself up to th