"It doesn't need any defence; it was Janet's fancy to play herself and I fail to see that she was wasting time. You really never waste time unless you are under coercion." "Another rotten paradox," he laughed, "go on!" "When I allow convention to force me to play cards I feel that I am wasting time, for I hate the blamed things. But if I spend a day pottering with the wheels of an old clock I am not wasting time: I am extremely interested all the time." "No, no! It won't do! Janet was wasting time, and you know it, in spite of your arguing!" "I'll tell you what's wrong with you and all your fellow educationists, Macdonald," I said. "You've got utilitarian commercial minds. You worship work and duty, and you have your eyes on monetary success all the time. You look upon bairns as a foreman mechanic looks upon workmen, and your idea of wasted time is the same as his. If I were Bruce, the linen merchant, I should certainly accuse a girl of wasting time if I caught her reading a novelette during working hours. Bruce has one definite aim--production of linen. He knows exactly what he wants to produce. You don't, and I don't. We don't know what effect puzzling out anagrams will have on Janet's mentality. We have no right to accuse her of wasting time." "Don't tell me," he cried; "there is a difference between work and play. Janet has no more right to play during school hours than a mill-girl has to read novelettes during working hours." "The mill-girl is a wage-slave, and I don't think that dominies should apply the ethics of wage-slavery to education. Her master, Bruce, goes golfing and fishing on working days, only, he is economically free, and he can do what he likes. And I don't suppose you will contend that tending a loom is the goal of humanity. If you want to make Janet an efficient mill-girl by all means coerce her to work in school. But, Macdonald, I have argued a score of times that education should not aim at turning out wage-slaves. If Janet is to be a mill-girl all your history and grammar won't make her tend a loom any better; so far as the loom is concerned the composing of anagrams will help her quite as much as grammar will." When Macdonald had gone I made up my mind that I wouldn't argue about education with him again. I'll bring out my pack of cards when he next visits me. * * * I have had a sharp attack of influenza, and have been in bed for a week. When my temperature fell I commenced to read a book on political philosophy, but I had to give it up. I asked Margaret to borrow a few novels from Macdonald's school library, and I found content. I read _The Forest Lovers_, _King Solomon's Mines_, and one of Guy Boothby's Dr. Nikola stories, and was entranced.