ly child you are, and yet you think
yourself a woman," "but I must do as I think right in this matter. I
hope to prove to you and everyone else that there is nothing derogatory
in the work I mean to undertake. It is not what I would choose, perhaps,
but everything else is closed to me," thinking sorrowfully of my
life-long misfortune, as I always called it, and my repressed longings
for hospital training.

"Perhaps if you waited something else might turn up." But I shook my
head at this.

"I have waited too long already, Uncle Keith; idleness soon becomes a
habit."

"Then if you have made up your mind, it is useless to try and alter it,"
returned Uncle Keith, in a slightly ironical tone, and he actually took
up the volume he was reading in a way that showed he had dismissed the
subject. I was never more astonished in my life; never had Uncle Keith
so completely baffled me.

I had spent the whole time during which I ought to have been listening
to the sermon, in recapitulating the heads of my arguments in favour of
this very scheme; I would show Uncle Keith how clearly and logically I
could work out the subject.

I had thought out quite an admirable little essay on feminine work in
the nineteenth century by the time Mr. Wright had finished his
discourse. I meant to have cited the Challoners as an example. Aunt
Agatha had stayed in their neighbourhood of Oldfield just before her
marriage, and had often paid visits at Longmead and Glen Cottage.

The eldest Miss Challoner--Nan, I think they called her--was just
preparing for her own wedding, and Aunt Agatha often told me what a
beautiful girl she was, and what a fine, intelligent creature the second
sister Phillis seemed. She was engaged to a young clergyman at Hadleigh,
and there had been some talk of a double wedding, only Nan's
father-in-law, Mr. Mayne, of Longmead, had been rather cross at the
notion, so Phillis's was to be postponed until the autumn.

All the neighbourhood of Oldfield had been ringing with the strange
exploits of these young ladies. One little fact had leaked out after
another; it was said their own cousin, Sir Henry Challoner, of Gilsbank,
had betrayed the secret, though he always vowed his wife had a hand, or
rather a tongue, in the business; but anyhow, there was a fine nine
days' gossip over the matter.

It seemed that some time previously Mrs. Challoner and her three
daughters had sustained severe losses, and the three girls, instead of