"Advanced mathematics!" he exclaimed. "Can you keep accounts?"

"I don't know," she answered doubtfully.

"Then what is this nonsense about advanced mathematics?"

"Oh, I have finished Barnard Smith, and I thought I should like to go on,"
she explained.

"Now, isn't that like your sex?" he observed, smiling at his own
superiority. "You pick things up with a parrot-like sharpness, but haven't
intelligence enough to make any practical application of them. A woman
closely resembles a parrot in her mental processes, and in the use she
makes of fine phrases which she does not understand to produce an effect
of cleverness--such as 'advanced mathematics!'"

Evadne bent her brow, and let him ruminate a little in infinite
self-content, then asked abruptly: "Can men keep accounts who have never
seen accounts kept?"

"No, of course not," he answered, seeing in this a new instance of
feminine imbecility, and laughing.

"Ah," she observed, then added thoughtfully as she moved away: "I should
like to see how accounts are kept."

She never had any more conversation with her father upon this subject, but
from that time forward mathematics, which had before been only an incident
in the way of lessons, became an interest in life, and a solid part of her