Rose sat down promptly, and wrought according to orders. After a busy
pause of ten minutes, her mother asked, "Do you think yourself oppressed
now--a victim?"

"No, mother."

"Yet, as far as I understood your tirade, it was a protest against all
womanly and domestic employment."

"You misunderstood it, mother. I should be sorry not to learn to sew.
You do right to teach me, and to make me work."

"Even to the mending of your brothers' stockings and the making of
sheets?"

"Yes."

"Where is the use of ranting and spouting about it, then?"

"Am I to do nothing but that? I will do that, and then I will do more.
Now, mother, I have said my say. I am twelve years old at present, and
not till I am sixteen will I speak again about talents. For four years I
bind myself an industrious apprentice to all you can teach me."

"You see what my daughters are, Miss Helstone," observed Mrs. Yorke;
"how precociously wise in their own conceits! 'I would rather this, I
prefer that'--such is Jessie's cuckoo song; while Rose utters the bolder
cry, 'I _will_, and I will _not_!'"

"I render a reason, mother; besides, if my cry is bold, it is only heard
once in a twelvemonth. About each birthday the spirit moves me to
deliver one oracle respecting my own instruction and management. I utter
it and leave it; it is for you, mother, to listen or not."

"I would advise all young ladies," pursued Mrs. Yorke, "to study the
characters of such children as they chance to meet with before they
marry and have any of their own to consider well how they would like
the responsibility of guiding the careless, the labour of persuading the
stubborn, the constant burden and task of training the best."

"But with love it need not be so very difficult," interposed Caroline.
"Mothers love their children most dearly--almost better than they love
themselves."

"Fine talk! very sentimental! There is the rough, practical part of life
yet to come for you, young miss."

"But, Mrs. Yorke, if I take a little baby into my arms--any poor woman's
infant, for instance--I feel that I love that helpless thing quite
peculiarly, though I am not its mother. I could do almost anything for
it willingly, if it were delivered over entirely to my care--if it were
quite dependent on me."

"You _feel_! Yes, yes! I dare say, now. You are led a great deal by your
_feelings_, and you think yourself a very sensitive personage, no doubt.
Are you aware that, with all these ro