smaller sacrifice somehow was less easy; but it disturbed her a little in the perfection of her gentle enjoyment, and dictated a few restless movements which caught her father’s eye. He turned and looked at her, asking fretfully, with a look, what was the matter, for he did not like to be disturbed. “Perhaps,” said Rose, inquiringly, and appealing to him with another look, “I ought to go in and see what is wanted. Perhaps I could be of some use to mamma.” Mr. Damerel smiled. “Use?” he said. “Has your mother bitten you with her passion for use? You are not of the useful kind, take my word for it; and make yourself happy, like your namesakes, who toil not, neither do they spin.” “But perhaps”--said Rose softly to herself--her father gave her a friendly little nod and returned to his book--and she had to solve her problem without his assistance. She tried to do it, sitting on the grass, and it was a long and rather troublesome process. It would have been much more easily and briefly settled, had she gone into the school-room; but then I am afraid Rose did not wish it to be solved that way. CHAPTER II. Mrs. Damerel went back into the house with a countenance much less placid than that of her husband. I scarcely know why it is that the contrast of perfect repose and enjoyment with anxiety, work, and care should irritate the worker as it invariably does; but here indeed there was reason enough; for Mrs. Damerel felt that the two people luxuriating in total absence of care on this delightful morning ought to have taken a considerable share with her in her labors and lightened the burden she was now obliged to bear alone. This mingled a sharpness of feeling with her toils. People who interpret human nature coarsely--and they are, perhaps, the majority--would have said that Mrs. Damerel was jealous of her husband’s preference for Rose’s society, and this would have been a total and vulgar mistake; but she had in her mind a feeling which it is difficult to explain, which for the moment made her irritation with Rose more strong than her irritation with Rose’s father. He was, in the first place, a man--grand distinction, half contemptuous, half respectful, with which women of Mrs. Damerel’s age (I don’t say young women often do it, at least consciously--except in the case of their fathers and brothers) account for and make up their minds to so many things. I am not attempting to account for this sentiment, which is so similar to that with which men in their turn regard women; I only acknowledge its existence. He was a man, brought up as all men are (I still quote Mrs. Damerel’s thoughts, to which she seldom or never gave expression), to think of themselves first, and expect everything to give in to them. But Rose had none of these privileges. What her mother as a woman had to take upon her, Rose had an equal right to take too. Mrs. Damerel herself could not forget, though everybody else did, that she had been a Rose