tence in white with a sheaf of lilies
in her hand, would announce, in a jaunty way, that she was about to be
married.

"You don't mean that you're going to leave us?" she said.

"I've not made up my mind about anything," said Mary--a remark which
could be taken as a generalization.

Mrs. Seal got the teacups out of the cupboard and set them on the table.

"You're not going to be married, are you?" she asked, pronouncing the
words with nervous speed.

"Why are you asking such absurd questions this afternoon, Sally?" Mary
asked, not very steadily. "Must we all get married?"

Mrs. Seal emitted a most peculiar chuckle. She seemed for one moment
to acknowledge the terrible side of life which is concerned with the
emotions, the private lives, of the sexes, and then to sheer off from it
with all possible speed into the shades of her own shivering virginity.
She was made so uncomfortable by the turn the conversation had taken,
that she plunged her head into the cupboard, and endeavored to abstract
some very obscure piece of china.

"We have our work," she said, withdrawing her head, displaying cheeks
more than usually crimson, and placing a jam-pot emphatically upon the
table. But, for the moment, she was unable to launch herself upon one of
those enthusiastic, but inconsequent, tirades upon liberty, democracy,
the rights of the people, and the iniquities of the Government, in which
she delighted. Some memory from her own past or from the past of her sex
rose to her mind and kept her abashed. She glanced furtively at Mary,
who still sat by the window with her arm upon the sill. She noticed how
young she was and full of the promise of womanhood. The sight made her
so uneasy that she fidgeted the cups upon their saucers.

"Yes--enough work to last a lifetime," said Mary, as if concluding some
passage of thought.

Mrs. Seal brightened at once. She lamented her lack of scientific
training, and her deficiency in the processes of logic, but she set
her mind to work at once to make the prospects of the cause appear
as alluring and important as she could. She delivered herself of an
harangue in which she asked a great many rhetorical questions and
answered them with a little bang of one fist upon another.

"To last a lifetime? My dear child, it will last all our lifetimes. As
one falls another steps into the breach. My father, in his generation, a
pioneer--I, coming after him, do my little best. What, alas! can one do
more?