was not taken up; but once he found he could not conquer Johanna he
gave up trying, and now lies peaceably enough. He had to learn early
that there are things more important in the world than his little self.
Nothing do I object to more than a household revolving around children
as a centre. Marriage _ought_ to double powers--make people unselfish;
while, as a rule, it only enlarges the sphere of egotistic
concentration and absorption. If I gave up my time and thoughts to Mill
(we've named him for this generation's great English apostle of
liberty), as ordinary mothers do, it would seem to me a wickedness. But
I scarcely find him the least hindrance. I have begun to speak a little
in our suffrage meetings this winter, and have been away a good deal
from home for that purpose--once for three weeks at Liverpool and in
the north of Ireland."

"But you do not mean without your baby?"

"Oh, certainly. He is only a little animal as yet, requiring animal
cares which I can provide without making the sacrifice of ability for
higher work. Johanna attends to him far better than I could, and is not
above such uses. I believe in economizing forces. By and by, when his
intellect begins to develop, he will be far more interesting to me, and
I shall be of use to him."

"You weaned him, then, very early?"

"Oh, dear, yes. Since he was three months old, he's been brought up as
Pip was. But perhaps 'Great Expectations' was not among your books
read."

"No; but I suppose you mean your baby's brought up by hand? But I can't
think how you could bear to put him away from you if it wasn't actually
needful. Why, my heart's broken only to think that in a month or so more
my baby will not depend upon me, humanly, for all her little life."

"Ah, plainly you have a vocation to be a mother. I haven't; and if I had
to care for Mill in all things, it would be simple slavery to me. But it
must be a great step from art to the nursery too."

"That means a step _down_. I suppose I should have thought so once, but
never since I held my baby in my arms, and she's a far more wonderful
creation to me than any old master's cherub I ever copied. And not my
baby alone, but all babies. I never pass one in the street now, ever so
ugly or dirty, without a warm feeling for it, and no charity opens my
purse so quickly as a _creche_, or a foundling, or orphan asylum. I
could have been very happy as an artist always. Art is full of the
noblest strength and comp