"If you call idlers gentlemen and ladies, we do not agree as to terms; but if you mean, as I suppose you do, that some people, especially a large proportion of women and girls, do not formally receive a definite amount of money for a definite amount of work, that is true. Don't you think, though, that mothers and sisters and wives, who keep house, take care of little children, do all the family sewing, care for the sick, and attend to the many details of a woman's life, work?--yes, do a great deal of work for a very small amount of living? Think of your mother for a moment." "Yes, sir; I see." "And," continued his uncle, "when ladies devote themselves faithfully to good works, Sunday-school work, work among the poor, teaching, etc., they are as really working for their living as if they were in a factory." "It doesn't seem so." "No, it doesn't seem so, because we have wrong ideas about the nobility of labor. If we really believed what the Bible says,--that the servant of all is the chiefest of all,--we should value work and workmen just in proportion to the use which the work they do is to the community and the world. In that sense, Alfred, a doctor's work or a minister's work might stand a little higher than a manufacturer's, a teacher's position be more desirable than that of a factory-girl, because in all of these professions there is more opportunity to do good to the bodies and souls of men; and yet I doubt if any are in a position to do more good than your Mr. James Mountjoy and his family. And as to being gentlemen or ladies, it is just as much your duty and just as possible to be those in the rag-room as in a palace, should your lot be cast there." "It is not considered so genteel," said Tessa, who had not quite forgotten the teachings of her novels. "By whom? Foolish butterflies? or men and women of sense? Gentility meant, originally, gentleness: that gentleness which better opportunities of education were supposed to give. But so much culture as that is now within the reach of every one, and there is no reason why it should not exist in the mill and the counting-room, the kitchen and the store, as well as in the parlor and the library." "But after all," said Mrs. Robertson, "there seems something low and sordid in working for money." "That is because we should not work for money--as the motive of work, I mean. If every one in the world were a Christian, and did the work which came to him to do, upon Bible principles, endeavoring to fulfil the precept: 'Whether ye eat or drink or whatsoever ye do, do all to the glory of God,' and accepted his living, small or great, from his hands, just as a little child accepts his from his father's hands, we should hear nothing about the degradation of service. Every one would constantly say: 'Lord, what wilt thou have me to do?' And we should take our daily bread, as well as all the pleasant things of our lives, thankfully from him who has given us all things to enjoy."