A man cannot realise that a woman ever can have ambition--that she can sicken at the dusters and pudding-cloths that are supposed to be her proper occupation, that she does sometimes feel even a little bit better educated or cleverer than the clever creature who makes the money; and if only I can get one of the male sex to believe that we do sometimes want a little of his freedom, a little of his powers of money-making, a little of his ability to take a holiday unhaunted by never-ceasing dreads and fears of what awful ends the children are coming to at home in our absence, I shall not have lived in vain, particularly if at the same time he takes the double burden on his own shoulders, when his wife has presented him with a small son or daughter, and takes care that not even a whisper of the cook’s wickedness passes the bedroom door, until Materfamilias is able to bring her mind to bear upon a matter that can, no doubt, be explained as soon as the feminine intellect grapples with it. And one more very serious word for the last on this subject: let Edwin bear in mind that much more care is needed with No. 5 or No. 6 than was ever bestowed at the time when No. 1 put the house in a stir, and altered all the domestic arrangements. Angelina is not so young as she was, dear soul; she is very tired. She is quite sure such a numerous family must bring her to the workhouse, and unless Edwin is goodness itself he may so depress and harass his wife by his depression that she may slip out of his fingers altogether, and leave him to himself, that most utterly to be pitied person on earth, a widower with young children, to find out what he has lost, and to realise all too late what he might have saved, had he remembered how desperately hard women do work, and how unending and never-ceasing is their toil; which has dulness as a background and utter sameness as a rule, as a drawback to its being satisfactorily performed.