ently; in the meantime I may leave it to the
reader to judge whether the cottage woman's needs, since the peasant
system broke down, are being well met.

But I must not leave it to be inferred that the women, thus stranded
between two civilizations, are therefore degraded or brutalized. From
repeated experience one knows that their sense of courtesy--of good
manners as distinct from merely fashionable or cultured manners--is very
keen: in kindness and good-will they have nothing to learn from
anybody, and most of their "superiors" and would-be teachers might learn
from them. Nor would I disparage their improved housekeeping, as though
it had no significance. It may open no doorway for them into
middle-class civilization, but I think it puts their spirits, as it
were, on the watch for opportunities of personal development. I judge by
their looks. An expression, not too often seen elsewhere, rests in the
eyes of most of the cottage women--an expression neither self-complacent
nor depressed, nor yet exactly docile, though it is near to that. The
interpretation one would put upon it depends on the phrases one is wont
to use. Thus some would say that the women appear to be reaching out
towards "respectability" instead of the blowsy good-temper bred of
field-work; others, more simply, but perhaps more truly, that they are
desirous of being "good." But whatever epithet one gives it, there is
the fine look: a look hardly of expectancy--it is not alert enough for
that--but rather of patient quietness and self-possession, the innermost
spirit being held instinctively unsullied, in that receptive state in
which a religion, a brave ethic, would flourish if the seeds of such a
thing could be sown there. A hopeful, a generous and stimulating
outlook--that is what must be regained before the loss of the peasant
outlook can be made good to them. They are in want of a view of life
that would reinstate them in their own--yes, and in other
people's--estimation; a view of social well-being, not of the village
only, but of all England now, in which they can hold the position proper
to women who are wives and mothers.

And this, vague though it is, shows up some of the more pressing needs
of the moment. Above all things the economic state of the cottage-women
requires improvement. There must be some definite leisure for them, and
they must be freed from the miserable struggle with imminent
destitution, if they are to find the time and the m