e she would gladly
have worked, too, but the phrase "spare Virginia" had been uttered so
often in her hearing that it had acquired at last almost a religious
significance. To have been forced to train her daughter in any
profitable occupation which might have lifted her out of the class of
unskilled labour in which indigent gentlewomen by right belonged, would
have been the final dregs of humiliation in Mrs. Pendleton's cup. On one
of Aunt Docia's bad days, when Jinny had begged to be allowed to do part
of the washing, she had met an almost passionate refusal from her
mother. "It will be time enough to spoil your hands after you are
married, darling!" And again, "Don't do that rough sewing, Jinny. Give
it to me." From the cradle she had borne her part in this racial custom
of the sacrifice of generation to generation--of the perpetual
immolation of age on the flowery altars of youth. Like most customs in
which we are nurtured, it had seemed natural and pleasant enough until
she had watched the hollows deepen in her mother's temples and the
tireless knotted hands stumble at their work. Then a pang had seized her
and she had pleaded earnestly to be permitted to help.

"If you only knew how unhappy it makes me to see you ruining your pretty
fingers, Jinny. My child, the one comfort I have is the thought that I
am sparing you."

Sparing her! Always that from the first! Even Gabriel chimed in when it
became a matter of Jinny. "Let me wash the dishes, Lucy," he would
implore. "What? Will you trust me with other people's souls, but not
with your china?"

"It's not a man's work, Mr. Pendleton. What would the neighbours think?"

"They would think, I hope, my dear, that I was doing my duty."

"But it would not be dignified for a clergyman. No, I cannot bear the
sight of you with a dishcloth."

In the end she invariably had her way with them, for she was the
strongest. Jinny must be spared, and Gabriel must do nothing
undignified. About herself it made no difference unless the neighbours
were looking; she had not thought of herself, except in the indomitable
failing of her "false pride," since her marriage, which had taken place
in her twentieth year. A clergyman's wife might do menial tasks in
secret, and nobody minded, but they were not for a clergyman.

For a minute, while she was dressing, Virginia thought of these
things--of how hard life had been to her mother, of how pretty she must
have been in her youth. What she