'But if she had been happy?' 'But she had not been happy. She used to cry.' 'Oh, of course she used to cry sometimes, when she thought more than usual of her sweet--of her sweet--But for all that she had been happy, and so had he. Why, you know he had. Didn't she look after him, and keep house for him? Didn't she cook for him? Not very beautifully, perhaps, but still she did cook, and there was dinner every day. Didn't she go to market three times a week, and taste all the butter? Didn't she help to do the rooms? And in the evenings weren't they happy together, with nobody to worry them? And then, when he missed his darling wife, didn't the barbarian always know he was doing it, and come and sit on his knee, and kiss him, and make up for it? Didn't she? Now didn't she?' Papa unwound himself, and walked up and down with a desperate face. 'Girls of sixteen must learn how to dress and to behave. A father cannot show them that,' he said. 'But they do dress and behave.' 'Rose-Marie, unmended stockings are not dressing. And to talk to a learned stranger well advanced in years with the freedom of his equal in age and knowledge, as I saw one doing lately, is not behaving.' 'Oh, Papa, she wouldn't do that again, I'm certain.' 'She wouldn't have done it that once if she had had a mother.' 'But the poor wretch hadn't got a mother.' 'Exactly. A mother, therefore, must be provided.' Here, I remember, there was a long pause. Papa walked, and I watched him in despair. Despair, too, was in his own face. He had had time to forget the doughnuts, and how cold he had been, and how hungry. So shaken was I that I actually suggested the engagement of a finishing governess to finish that which had never been begun, pointing out that she, at least, having finished would go; and he said he could not afford one; and he added the amazing statement that a wife was cheaper.