arted as can be, but lump them together on a committee, and
they're as cold and cruel and grasping as the meanest business man you
could name!"

"More so!" said I, approvingly, and for once Isabel did not resent the
disparagement of her sex.

"The question arose, what was to be done about Mary Mason, and every one
of them, David--every one of them, with young daughters of their own
growing up at home, voted to let that girl go round this town selling a
book."

"Was that what she wanted to do herself?"

"Yes; but think of them letting her do it! You know as well as I do what
sort of a city this is, and whether it's safe for a lovely girl like
that to go to men's offices, trying with her pretty looks and ways to
wheedle them into subscribing for Stanley's 'Darkest Africa.' Oh, I was
wild! I said to Mrs. Robinson: 'How would you like your Lulu to do it?'
'The cases are very different,' said she; 'my daughter has no need to
earn her living.' 'Mrs. Constable,' said I, 'if your grandchild were
left alone in the world, what would you think of the charity of any body
of women who allowed her to go from under their protection to make her
living in this way?' 'I don't see the connection,' said she; 'Mary
Mason's been fighting the world since she was seven years old, and just
because she happens to have a pretty face, you seem to think she should
be put in a glass case and never do anything for herself.'"

"She had you there, Belle," said I, pulling her down to the arm of my
big easy-chair. "Let the girl alone; she'll come out all right. She's
too good-looking for a nurse or a housemaid, and she doesn't know enough
arithmetic to be a shop girl. I don't see what else she can do."

"That's just what the ladies calmly decided," said my wife, walking the
floor again. "They seemed to think that a little business training would
just be the making of Mary. Oh, these Christians!"

"You see, my dear," said I, "committees are not supposed to have any
conscience. They have the income of the Refuge in trust for the
contributors, and they have no right to keep on supporting a girl who is
willing to work for herself. How she proposes to do it is none of their
business."

"That's just what it is--their business; their business to see that she
doesn't meet the very fate we've saved her from once already. Oh!
there's no getting these narrow-minded, orthodox, bigoted people to see
more than one side of a question."

"Take care you don't