occurred to me and that I have a scheme for removing
them--a very happy scheme, if you will help. Now, in the first place,
will you put the personal question out of sight and consider my scheme on
its merits? And next, will you, in advising me, take account of my
ignorance?"

Hester smiled. "I know," she said, "that kindness can be cunning.
I am going to be on my guard."

"Well, but listen at any rate," he pleaded, with an eager stammer.
"Won't you agree with me that the education you give these children here
is dreadfully wasteful?"

She glanced at him keenly. "If you are taking the ordinary ratepayer's
view--" she began.

"I am not taking the ordinary ratepayer's view, except to this extent--
that I think the ratepayers' and taxpayers' money should be spent to the
best advantage. But is it?--either here or in any parish in England?"

"No, it is not."

"Will you tell me why, Miss Marvin?"

"Because," answered Hester, "we do a little good and then refuse to follow
it up. If we were to take a child and say, 'You shall be a farm
labourer,' or 'You shall be a domestic servant, and in due time marry a
labourer and rear his family; 'and if, content with this, we were to teach
these children just enough for their fate--the boy to plough and work a
threshing machine and touch his cap to his betters, the girl to cook and
sew and keep house on sixteen shillings a week--why, then there might be
something to say for us. We have not the heart to do this, and yet in
effect we do more cruelly. We are not tyrants enough to take a child of
eight and label him for life: we start him on a kind of education which
seems to offer him a chance; and then, just as the prospect should be
opening, we suddenly lose interest in him, wash our hands of him, turn him
adrift. Some few--a very few--have the grit to push on, unhelped by us,
and grasp their opportunity. But for one of these a thousand and more
fall back on their fate, and of our teaching the one thing they keep is
discontent. We have built a porch, to nowhere. We invest millions; and
just as our investment begins to repay us splendidly, we sell out, share
by share. That is why I think sometimes, Sir George, in my bitterness,
that education in England must be the most wasteful thing in the world."

"If, in this corner of England, someone were to set himself to fight this
waste, would you help?"

"As Mistress of the Widows' Houses?"

Sir George laughed. "As Mistr