child of light on the subject of her own sex compared with the gentle
vicar, and incapable, even before her education is half over, of the envy
and meanness which the latter thinks it kindest to take a humourous view
of, and of the disingenuousness at which he also smiles as the inevitable
outcome of feminine inferiority--at least _I_ never met a girl in my
position who would not have admired Miss Wilmot's beauty, nor do I know
one who would not answer her father frankly, however embarrassing the
question might be, if he asked her opinion of a possible lover."

The next entry in the book is on the subject of "Mrs. Caudle's Curtain
Lectures," and, like most of the others, it merits attention from the
unexpected view she takes of the position. It does not strike her as being
humourous, but pathetic. She feels the misery of it, and she had already
begun to hold that human misery is either a thing to be remedied or a
sacred subject to be dwelt on in silence; and she considers Mrs. Caudle
entirely with a view to finding a cure for her case.

"The Caudles were petty tradespeople," she says, "respectable in their own
position, but hardly lovable according to our ideas. Mr. Caudle, with meek
persistency, goes out to amuse himself alone when his day's work is done.
Mrs. Caudle's day's work never is done. She has the wearing charge of a
large family, and the anxiety of making both ends meet on a paltry income,
which entails much self denial and sordid parsimony, but is
conscientiously done, if not cheerfully, nevertheless. It is Mr. Caudle,
however, who grumbles, making no allowance for extra pressure of work on
washing days, when she is too busy to hash the cold mutton. The rule of
her life is weariness and worry from morning till night, and for
relaxation in the evening she must sit down and mend the children's
clothes; and even when that is done she goes to bed with the certainty of
being roused from her hard-earned rest by a husband who brings a sickening