ng of
themselves is being wrenched away from them. She said that her children
were all bad and unnatural; that she had spent her whole life in their
interests; that if it had not been for her, we should all of us have
grown up without education or accomplishments, or looks, or anything
else; that she watched over us incessantly when we were little children,
denying herself, spending her youth in devotion to us, when she might
have gone into the world, and had some brightness and pleasure. If we
imagined that she had never felt the dulness of her life, and never
longed to go about and see people and things, we were much mistaken. But
she had renounced everything she cared for, from her girlhood--she was
scarcely older than I when her sacrifices began--and now her children
gave no consideration to her; they were ready to scatter themselves
hither and thither without a thought of her, or her wishes. They even
talked scoffingly of the kind of life that she had led for _them_--for
_them_, she repeated bitterly."

Hadria's face had clouded.

"Truly parents must have a bad time of it!" she exclaimed, "but does it
really console them that their children should have a bad time of it
too?"

Algitha was trembling and very pale.

"Mother says I shall ruin my life by this fad. What real good am I going
to do? She says it is absurd the way we talk of things we know nothing
about."

"But she won't let us know about things; one must talk about
_some_thing!" cried Hadria with a dispirited laugh.

"She says she has experience of life, and we are ignorant of it. I
reminded her that our ignorance was not exactly our fault."

"Ah! precisely. Parents throw their children's ignorance in their teeth,
having taken precious good care to prevent their knowing anything. I can't
understand parents; they must have been young themselves once. Yet they
seem to have forgotten all about it. They keep us hoodwinked and infantile,
and then launch us headlong into life, with all its problems to meet, and
all momentous decisions made for us, past hope of undoing." Hadria rose
restlessly in her excitement. "Surely no creature was ever dealt with so
insanely as the well-brought-up girl! Surely no well-wisher so sincere as
the average parent ever ill-treated his charge so preposterously."

Again there was a long silence, filled with painful thought. "One begins
to understand a little, why women do things that one despises, and why
the proudest of the