fancy their saying, and,
like children playing with their bricks, "Now let us knock it all down,
and build another, one. It will be such fun."

However, these are intrusive, autumnal thoughts in this book of simple
youth, and our young people knew them not. They were far indeed from
Esther's mind as she talked with Dot of the future one afternoon.
Instead, her words were full of impatience with the slow march of
events, and the enforced inactivity of a girl's life at home.

"It is so much easier for the boys," she was saying. "There is something
for them to do. But we can do nothing but sit at home and wait, darn
their socks, and clap our hands at their successes. I wish I were
a man!"

"No, you don't," said Dot; "for then you couldn't marry Mike. And you
couldn't wear pretty dresses--Oh! and lots of things. I don't much envy
a man's life, after all. It's all very well talking about hard work when
you haven't got to do it; and it's not so much the work as the
responsibility. It must be such a responsibility to be a man."

"Of course you're right, Dot--but, oh! this waiting is so stupid, all
the same. If only I could be doing something--anything!"

"Well, you _are_ doing something. Is it nothing to be all the world to a
man?" said Dot, wistfully; "nothing to be his heaven upon earth? Nothing
to be the prize he is working for, and nothing to sustain and cheer him
on, as you do Mike, and as Angel cheers Henry? Would Henry have been the
same without Angel, or Mike the same without you? No, the man's work
makes more noise, but the woman's work is none the less real and useful
because it is quiet and underground."

"Dear Dot, what a wise old thing you're growing! But you know you're
longing all the time for some work to do yourself. Didn't you say the
other day that you seemed to be wasting your life here, making beds and
doing housework?"

"Yes; but I'm different. Don't you see?" retorted Dot, sadly. "I've got
no Mike. Your work is to help Mike be a great actor, but I've got no one
to help be anything. You may be sure I wouldn't complain of being idle
if I had. I think you're a bit forgetful sometimes how happy you are."

"Poor old Dot! you needn't talk as if you're such a desperate old
maid,--you're not twenty yet. And I'm sure it's a good thing for you
that you haven't got any of the young men about here--to help be
aldermen! Wait till you come and stay with us in London, then you'll
soon find some one to work fo