'I suppose we ought to wish that Hester should be married some day,' he said to his wife about this time. She shuddered and dashed her hands together as though deprecating some evil,--some event which she could hardly hope to avoid but which was certainly an evil. 'Do you not wish that yourself?' She shook her head. 'Is it not the safest condition in which a woman can live?' 'How shall any one be safe among the dangers of this world, Nicholas?' She habitually called her husband by his Christian name, but she was the only living being who did so. 'More safe then?' said he. 'It is the natural condition of a woman.' 'I do not know. Sin is natural.' 'Very likely. No doubt. But marriage is not sinful.' 'Men are so wicked.' 'Some of them are.' 'Where is there one that is not steeped in sin over his head?' 'That applies to women also; doesn't it?' said the banker petulantly. He was almost angry because she was introducing a commonplace as to the world's condition into a particular argument as to their daughter's future life,--which he felt to be unfair and illogical. 'Of course it does, Nicholas. We are all black and grimed with sin, men and women too; and perhaps something more may be forgiven to men because they have to go out into the world and do their work. But neither one nor the other can be anything but foul with sin;--except,--except--' He was quite accustomed to the religious truth which was coming, and, in an ordinary way, did not object to the doctrine which she was apt to preach to him often. But it had no reference whatever to the matter now under discussion. The general condition of things produced by the fall of Adam could not be used as an argument against matrimony generally. Wicked as men and women are it is so evidently intended that they should marry and multiply, that even she would not deny the general propriety of such an arrangement. Therefore when he was talking to her about their daughter, she was ill-treating him when on that occasion she flew away to her much-accustomed discourse. 'What's the use, then, of saying that men are wicked?' 'They are. They are!' 'Not a doubt about it. And so are the women, but they've got to have husbands and wives. They wouldn't be any the better if there were no marrying. We have to suppose that Hester will do the same as other girls.' 'I hope not, Nicholas.' 'But why not?' 'They are vain, and they adorn themselves, not in modest apparel, as St. Paul says in First Timothy, chapter second, nor with shame-facedness and sobriety; but with braided hair and gold and pearls and costly array.' 'What has that to do with it?' 'Oh, Nicholas!' 'She might be married without all those things.' 'You said you wanted her to be like other girls.' 'No, I didn't. I said she would have to get married like other girls. You don't want to make a nun of her.' 'A nun! I would sooner sit by her bedside and watch her die! My Hester a nun!' 'Very well, then. Let her go out into the world----'