im seated before the fire, one hand
shading his eyes; and, as he prepared to rise, she rested both arms on
his shoulders, forcing him into his chair again.

"So you've bewitched Eileen, too, have you?" she said tenderly. "Isn't
she the sweetest little thing?"

"She's--ah--as tall as I am," he said, blinking at the fire.

"She's only nineteen; pathetically unspoiled--a perfect dear. Men are
going to rave over her and--_not_ spoil her. Did you ever see such
hair?--that thick, ruddy, lustrous, copper tint?--and sometimes it's
like gold afire. And a skin like snow and peaches!--she's sound to the
core. I've had her exercised and groomed and hardened and trained from
the very beginning--every inch of her minutely cared for exactly like my
own babies. I've done my best," she concluded with a satisfied sigh, and
dropped into a chair beside her brother.

"Thoroughbred," commented Selwyn, "to be turned out to-night. Is she
bridle-wise and intelligent?"

"More than sufficiently. That's one trouble--she's had, at times, a
depressing, sponge-like desire for absorbing all sorts of irrelevant
things that no girl ought to concern herself with. I--to tell the
truth--if I had not rigorously drilled her--she might have become a
trifle tiresome; I don't mean precisely frumpy--but one of those earnest
young things whose intellectual conversation becomes a visitation--one
of the wants-to-know-for-the-sake-of-knowledge sort--a dreadful human
blotter! Oh, dear; show me a girl with her mind soaking up 'isms' and
I'll show you a social failure with a wisp of hair on her cheek, who
looks the dowdier the more expensively she's gowned."

"So you believe you've got that wisp of copper-tinted hair tucked up
snugly?" asked Selwyn, amused.

"I--it's still a worry to me; at intervals she's inclined to let it
slop. Thank Heaven, I've made her spine permanently straight and her
head is screwed properly to her neck. There's not a slump to her from
crown to heel--_I_ know, you know. She's had specialists to forestall
every blemish. I made up my mind to do it; I'm doing it for my own
babies. That's what a mother is for--to turn out her offspring to the
world as flawless and wholesome as when they came into it!--physically
and mentally sound--or a woman betrays her stewardship. They must be as
healthy of body and limb as they are innocent and wholesome minded. The
happiest of all creatures are drilled thoroughbreds. Show me a young
girl, unspoiled me