women and spend their whole time in nursing babies! Think how
belittling!"

"Is it more so than spending it in dressing, driving, dancing, and
the like?"

"Of course it is. I had a friend once who shone like a star in
society. She married, and children as fast as she could. Well! what
consequence? She lost her beauty, lost her spirit and animation, lost
her youth, and lost her health. The only earthly things she can talk
about are teething, dieting, and the measles!"

I laughed at this exaggeration, and looked round to see what Ernest
thought of such talk. But he had disappeared.

"As you have spoken plainly to me, knowing, me, to be a wife and a
mother, you must allow me to 'speak plainly in return," I began.

"Oh, speak plainly, by all means! I am quite sick and tired of having
truth served up in pink cotton, and scented with lavender."

"Then you will permit me to say that when you speak contemptuously of
the vocation of maternity, you dishonor, not only the mother who bore
you, but the Lord Jesus Himself, who chose to be born of woman, and
to be ministered unto by her through a helpless infancy."

Miss Clifford was a little startled.

'How terribly in earnest you are! she said. It is plain that to you,
at any rate, life is indeed no humbug."