the poorest girl?"

"Horrors!" murmured Mrs. Brown.

"And those are common cases," Mrs. Burgoyne said eagerly, "I knew of
so many! Pretty little girls at European watering-places whose
mothers are spending thousands, and hundreds of thousands of dollars
to get out of their blood what no earthly power can do away with.
Sons of rich fathers whose valets themselves wouldn't change places
with them! And then the fine, clean, industrious middle-classes--or
upper classes, really, for the blood in their veins is the finest in
the world--are afraid to bring children into the world because of
dancing cotillions and motor-cars!"

"Well, of course I have only four," said Mrs. Brown, "but I've been
married only seven years--"

Mrs. Burgoyne laughed, came to a full stop, and reddened a little as
she went back busily to her sewing.

"Why do you let me run on at such a rate; you know my hobbies now!"
she reproached them. "I am not quite sane on the subject of what
ought to be done--and isn't--in that good old institution called
woman's sphere."

"That sounds vaguely familiar," said Mrs. Lloyd.

"Woman's sphere? Yes, we hate the sound of it," said Mrs. Burgoyne,
"just as a man who has left his family hates to talk of home ties,
and just as a deserter hates the conversation to come around to the