should want a good
one,--a man with a head on his shoulders, and a heart. Even if I
were young and good-looking, or rich, I doubt whether I could please
myself. As it is I am as likely to be taken bodily to heaven, as to
become any man's wife."

"I suppose most women think so of themselves at some time, and yet
they are married."

"I am not fit to marry. I am often cross, and I like my own way, and
I have a distaste for men. I never in my life saw a man whom I wished
even to make my intimate friend. I should think any man an idiot who
began to make soft speeches to me, and I should tell him so."

"Ah; you might find it different when he went on with it."

"But I think," said Priscilla, "that when a woman is married there is
nothing to which she should not submit on behalf of her husband."

"You mean that for me."

"Of course I mean it for you. How should I not be thinking of you,
living as you are under the same roof with us? And I am thinking of
Louey." Louey was the baby. "What are you to do when after a year or
two his father shall send for him to have him under his own care?"

"Nothing shall separate me from my child," said Mrs. Trevelyan
eagerly.

"That is easily said; but I suppose the power of doing as he pleased
would be with him."

"Why should it be with him? I do not at all know that it would be
with him. I have not left his house. It is he that has turned me
out."

"There can, I think, be very little doubt what you should do," said
Priscilla, after a pause, during which she had got up from her seat
under the thorn bush.

"What should I do?" asked Mrs. Trevelyan.

"Go back to him."

"I will to-morrow if he will write and ask me. Nay; how could I help
myself? I am his creature, and must go or come as he bids me. I am
here only because he has sent me."

"You should write and ask him to take you."

"Ask him to forgive me because he has ill-treated me?"

"Never mind about that," said Priscilla, standing over her companion,
who was still lying under the bush. "All that is twopenny-halfpenny
pride, which should be thrown to the winds. The more right you have
been hitherto the better you can afford to go on being right. What is
it that we all live upon but self-esteem? When we want praise it is
only because praise enables us to think well of ourselves. Every one
to himself is the centre and pivot of all the world."

"It's a very poor world that goes round upon my pivot," said Mrs.
Trevelyan.