"Well, then, I will be as plain as ever I can be, only premising that what
you call the cunning of the serpent--"

"Wisdom, Harry, not cunning."

"Is only that I like to give my arguments before my proposition. But here
it is--bare and defenceless, only--let me warn you--with a whole battery
behind it: it is, to bring up little Theodora as a servant to Constance."

My wife laughed.

"Well," she said, "for one who says so much about not thinking of the
morrow, you do look rather far forward."

"Not with any anxiety, however, if only I know that I am doing right."

"But just think: the child is about three months old."

"Well; Connie will be none the worse that she is being trained for her. I
don't say that she is to commence her duties at once."

"But Connie may be at the head of a house of her own long before that."

"The training won't be lost to the child though. But I much fear, my love,
that Connie will never be herself again. There is no sign of it. And Turner
does not give much hope."

"O Harry, Harry, don't say so! I can't bear it. To think of the darling
child lying like that all her life!"