"I thought my sister had long since learned that borrowing trouble necessitated the payment of usurious interest? Just now our little girl carries no gorgon's head; let her alone. The most imperatively demanded change in our system of female training, is the addition of a few years in which to work. American girls are turned out upon society when they should be beginning their apprenticeship under their mothers' eyes in all household arts and sciences; and they are wives and mothers before they are able physically, mentally, or morally to appreciate the sacred, solemn responsibilities that inhere in such positions. If our girls pursued methodically all the branches of a liberal and classical education, including domestic economy, until they were at least twenty, how much misery would be averted! how many more really elegant interesting women would be added to the charm of society, usefulness to country, happiness and sanctity of home! Had I means to bestow in such enterprises, I should like to endow some institution, and stipulate for a chair of household-arts-and-sciences-and-home-duties; and Regina should not go into general society until she had graduated therein." "Not another word of conspiracy against my little maid's peace! Lean forward a little, Peyton, and look at her yonder, coming along the rose-walk. See how the pigeons follow her. She has been gathering raspberries, and I promised she should make all she could pick into jelly for poor old Tobitha Meggs. How pure and fair she looks in her white dress! Dear little thing! Sometimes I am wicked enough to wish she had no mother, for then she would be wholly ours, and we could keep her always. Listen, she is singing Schubert's '_Ave Maria_'." After a moment's silence Mrs. Lindsay rose, and, passing her arm around her son's neck, leaned her cheek against his head, as he sat near his uncle, and looking through the open door at the slowly approaching figure. "Bishop, if I were an artist, I would paint her as a priestess at Ephesus, chanting a hymn to Diana; and instead of Hero and the pigeons, place brown deer and spotted fawns on mossy banks in the background." "Pooh! What a hopeless pagan you are, Elise? If I were a sculptor I would chisel a statue of purity, and give it her countenance." And Mr. Lindsay smiled in his mother's face, and said only for her ear: "Do not her eyes entitle her to be called Glaukopis?" CHAPTER IX.