"Why is it," I asked, "that we have never been able to get anything like that at home? When I think of the Irish nurses who are kind and faithful, no doubt, but quite untruthful, and speak with an Irish-American accent which is making the English language, as spoken in America, the most unmusical tongue in the world, and then see how these English children are taught, almost from the cradle, to speak clearly, softly, and musically, I am ashamed of the way in which we have wasted our heritage. Why is it we cannot find women like our trained nurses who would undertake the task of training the children to speak the language of Shakespeare, of which we hear so much and speak so little? Why is it not as interesting to teach good manners to the leaders of our future society as to keep their pampered little bodies healthy? Why are the girls who are starving on the pay of a school-teacher unwilling to undertake the fundamental education of the favored classes, not as menials, but as honored and respected friends, treated exactly as our trained nurses are? Why is it?" "For mercy's sake stop," cried Maud. "You make my head swim with your 'whys'! If I try to answer any of your questions you will say I am talking like Thomas." "Never mind whom you talk like, if only you answer them," I replied. "Well, I don't believe any one can answer them all, but one difficulty in the importation of the 'Nanny' is that you do not understand the secret spring of English life, _i.e._, of people of a certain position. Of course a nursery like this cannot be found in a house of people of small means. The head nurse is waited on by the second nurse, and is obeyed by the other servants. She does not take her meals in the servants' hall, but is served in the nursery. She holds the position of an N.C.O. in the army. The whole American household would have to be changed to make way for the English nurse."