newspaper to save the carpet, and was kneeling on
the floor, one morning, in front of the window, cleaning and filling
the little oil-stove, and Arthur was lying contentedly watching
her--"superintending her domestic duties," he used to call it, that
being all that he was equal to in his extreme weakness just then.

"You're a notable housekeeper," he said. "I shouldn't have expected
you from your appearance to be able to cook and clean as you do."

"I used to do this kind of thing as a child to help a lazy servant we
had, bless her," Beth answered. "The cooking and cleaning she taught
me have stood me in good stead."

"If you had a daughter, how would you bring her up?" he asked.

Beth opened the piece of paper with which she was cleaning the oil off
the stove, and regarded it thoughtfully. "I would bring her up in
happy seclusion, to begin with," she said. "She should have all the
joys of childhood; and then an education calculated to develop all
her intellectual powers without forcing them, and at the same time to
fit her for a thoroughly normal woman's life: childhood, girlhood,
wifehood, motherhood, each with its separate duties and pleasures all
complete. I would have her happy in each, steadfast, prudent,
self-possessed, methodical, economical; and if she had the capacity
for any special achievement, I think that such an education would have
developed the strength of purpose and self-respect necessary to carry
it through. I would also have her to know thoroughly the world that
she has to live in, so that she might be ready to act with discretion
in any emergency. I should, in fact, want to fit her for whatever
might befall her, and then leave her in confidence to shape her own
career. The life for a woman to long for--and a man too, I think--is a
life of simple duties and simple pleasures, a normal life; but I only
call that life normal which is suited to the requirements of the
woman's individual temperament."

"You don't clamour for more liberty, then?"

"It depends upon what you mean by that. The cry for more liberty is
sometimes the cry of the cowardly anxious to be excused from their
share of the duties and labours of life; and it is also apt to be a
cry not for liberty but for licence. One must discriminate."

"But how?"

"By the character and principles of the people you have to deal
with--obviously."

She had lighted her little oil-stove by this time, and set a saucepan
of water on it to boil.