army. But it's true. Our business is children, and kitchens, and
husbands, and meals, and we detest it all--"

"I like my husband a little," said Mrs. Brown, in a meek little
voice.

They all laughed. Then said Mrs. Lloyd, gazing sentimentally toward
the river bank, where her small daughter's twisted curls were
tossing madly in a game of "tag":

"I shall henceforth regard Mabel as a possible Joan of Arc."

"One of those boys MAY be a Lincoln, or a Thomas Edison, or a Mark
Twain," Sidney Burgoyne added, half-laughing, "and then we'll feel
just a little ashamed for having turned him complacently over to a
nurse or a boarding school. Of course, it leaves us free to go to
the club and hear a paper on the childhood of Napoleon, carefully
compiled years after his death. Why, men take heavy chances in their
work, they follow up the slightest opening, but we women throw away
opportunities to be great, every day of our lives! Scientists and
theorists are spending years of their lives pondering over every
separate phase of the development of children, but we, who have the
actual material in our hands, turn it over to nursemaids!"

"Yes, but lots of children disappoint their parents bitterly," said
Mrs. Brown, "and lots of good mothers have bad children!"

"I never knew a good mother to have a bad child--" began Mrs.
Burgoyne.