When her mother lay dying she said to the man beside whom she had worked for thirty-six years, mostly cloud and rain: “Henry, I don’t want a big, showy monument over me. If you should do something for me, build a school of some kind, a school where girls can be taught how to be useful wives and mothers, instead of spending their whole lives at learning.” And Nelly’s father had put by money, a large sum each year, until his daughter’s education was finished. Then he had said to her, “I want you to help me carry out your ma’s memorial.” And he turned over to her a mass of plans and hints and schemes which he had been accumulating for seven years. “Get up a plan,” he had said, “on the lines your ma would have liked. It’s a woman’s work--it’s your natural work. I’ll supply the money.” And after two years’ labour, one year of it abroad, she had perfected a scheme for a great school where several hundred girls could be instructed in all that a woman as a woman should know--housework, sewing, cooking, shopping, marketing, the elements of business and of art, the care of babies, the training and education of children. And she had so planned it that the girls could and should support themselves while they were learning. Frothingham did not take his eyes from her face as she talked. She seemed to him the most wonderful, the noblest human being in the world. “A fine, a beautiful idea,” he said. “But aren’t you afraid of spoiling those girls for workingmen’s wives? You’re educating entirely too much in this country, I should say, as it is. You’re making the lower classes restless and discontented. They’ll pull everything down about your ears the first thing you know.” Nelly smiled--he saw that she was not seeing him at all, was looking far, far past him. “I’m not worrying about the consequences,” she said. “If we did that we should never move. You must remember that we haven’t any classes here, but are all of one class--we differ in degree, but not in kind. One can’t look into the future. I only know it was intended for the light to shine on the whole human race, and that it’s our duty to help all we can. And knowledge is light, and ignorance is darkness, isn’t it? I’m not afraid of light, anywhere. Whether it’s little or much, it’s better than darkness.” He looked at her strangely. “I had never thought of that,” he said in a low voice. Then, after a few minutes: “How good you are! I didn’t know there was anybody in the world like you. How generous of you to give your life to these people.”