ground would not be well if they understood that their mother, in
this underground life of hers, was enduring any sacrifice on their
behalf. It was needful that they should think that the picking of
peas in a sun-bonnet, or long readings by her own fire-side, and
solitary hours spent in thinking, were specially to her mind. "Mamma
doesn't like going out." "I don't think mamma is happy anywhere out
of her own drawing-room." I do not say that the girls were taught to
say such words, but they were taught to have thoughts which led to
such words, and in the early days of their going out into the world
used so to speak of their mother. But a time came to them before
long,--to one first and then to the other, in which they knew that
it was not so, and knew also all that their mother had suffered for
their sakes.

And in truth Mrs Dale could have been as young in heart as they
were. She, too, could have played croquet, and have coquetted with
a haymaker's rake, and have delighted in her pony, ay, and have
listened to little nothings from this and that Apollo, had she
thought that things had been conformable thereto. Women at forty do
not become ancient misanthropes, or stern Rhadamanthine moralists,
indifferent to the world's pleasures--no, not even though they be
widows. There are those who think that such should be the phase of
their minds. I profess that I do not so think. I would have women,
and men also, young as long as they can be young. It is not that a
woman should call herself in years younger than her father's family
Bible will have her to be. Let her who is forty call herself forty;
but if she can be young in spirit at forty, let her show that she is
so.

I think that Mrs Dale was wrong. She would have joined that party on