lothes than they can buy
themselves. What they hanker for is a flat or boarding-house where they
won't have any housekeeping to do. Housekeeping! Their notions of
housekeeping don't go beyond boiling an egg on a gas range and opening
up a sofa to sleep on. You're an educated woman, Sylvia; what's going
to come of all this?"

"It isn't just the fault of the girls that they do this, is it? Near my
school-house there are girls who stay at home with their mothers, and
many of them are without any ambition of any kind. I'm a good deal for
the girl who wants to strike out for herself. The household arts as you
knew them in your youth can't be practised in the home any more on the
income of the average man. Most women of the kind we're talking about
wear ready-made clothes--not because they're lazy, but because the
tailor-made suits which life in a city demands can't be made by any
amateur sempstress. They're turned out by the carload in great factories
from designs of experts. There's no bread to bake in the modern
mechanic's home, for better bread and cake are made more cheaply in the
modern bakeshop. Wasn't there really a good deal of nonsense about the
pies that mother used to make--I wonder? There were perhaps in every
community women who were natural cooks, but our Mary used to drive
grandfather crazy with her saleratus biscuits and greasy doughnuts. A
good cook in the old times was famous all over the community because the
general level of cooking was so low. Women used to take great pride in
their preservings and jellyings, but at the present prices of fruit and
sugar a city woman would lose money making such things. It's largely
because this work can't be done at home that girls such as we have at
Elizabeth House have no sort of manual dexterity and have to earn a poor
living doing something badly that they're not interested in or fitted
for. Women have one terrible handicap in going out into the world to
earn their living; it's the eternal romance that's in all of us," said
Sylvia a little dreamily. "I don't believe any woman ever gets beyond
that." It was a note she rarely struck and Mrs. Owen looked at her
quickly. "I mean, the man who may be always waiting just around the
corner."

"You mean every girl has that chance before her? Well, a happy marriage
is a great thing--the greatest thing that can happen to a woman. My
married life was a happy one--very happy; but it didn't last long. It
was my misfortune to los