ou," she added triumphantly; "I should
tell them to give me the best, and I suppose they would know what I
ought to pay." This is hardly an extreme case. In the public schools the
girls still learn arithmetic,--perhaps they spend too much strength upon
it for the practical mastery they get; but in private schools the best
of teachers find it almost impossible to give girls a working knowledge
of the subject, because the tide of feeling is so strong against it.

By and by Miss Malvina's father found himself having trouble with his
workmen. There were strikes. The family received threatening letters.
Malvina's rosy cheeks grew pale. "I don't know what they want," she said
forlornly. "They say we are all so extravagant. I don't know what
difference that makes to them if we pay for what we buy. We never hurt
them. I wish we were not rich at all. It would be much nicer to be poor.
I should like to be a--what is it?--a commoner--or a communist or
something. Then nobody would be envious."

Now there was not a more generous girl in the world than Malvina. If she
had been afloat on a raft after a shipwreck she would have been the one
to give up her last ration of water to any one who needed it more. She
was ready to pour out money in any case of distress, but she had no
idea of its value, and none of her charities prospered, except so far
as her rosy, good-natured face could be seen, for that, to be sure, did
good like a medicine.

And she was not a stupid girl, though certainly not brilliant in
mathematics. If she had been taught that arithmetic is positively needed
by every girl, rich or poor, she could have learned all she needed to
know of figures to make her life a blessing to hundreds of people whom
she only injured for lack of such knowledge.

A vast amount of the daily comfort of people of narrow means depends on
the understanding the mother of a family has of accounts, so that the
real needs and pleasures may be provided for without the contraction of
debt. In a rich family the burden of the mother's incapacity for figures
does not fall directly on those dearest to her, but it has unconsciously
a far greater weight in the world at large, and is one of the chief
among the unrecognized elements causing the increasing bitterness
between the rich and the poor.

Let every girl, rich or poor, be required to keep her own accounts
accurately from the time she is old enough to have an allowance of even
ten cents a month, an