Baby-rearing, absorbingly interesting though it be, is really a terrible business; and the fewer the babies the worse it is. You hardly know what it means to have a night's rest for dread of the ever-recurring epidemics that so fatally ravage the nurseries of this country. Day and night you have the shadow of the clinical thermometer, your sword of Damocles, hanging over you, and are afraid to breathe lest you should bring it down. Then, when this hair-whitening strain begins to slacken a little and you think you are going to have an easy time, the children that are now able to take care of themselves utterly refuse to do so. Your girl goes wet-footed with a light heart, and you never see a telegraph messenger coming to the house without expecting to hear that your boy at school has broken his arm at football or his neck bird's-nesting. They follow their mischievous devices, and you can't help it; you can only cluck and fuss like a futile hen running round the pond in which her brood of ducklings is splashing. That's worse than baby-rearing, because you can at least do what you like with a baby. And then, when you pride yourself on having successfully got through the long struggle, and you tell yourself that now they are going to be a help and a comfort to you at last, off they go to the first stranger who beckons to them, and think no more about you than of an old nurse who has served her purpose--probably turning round to point out the errors you have committed, and to show you how much better you would have done if you had taken their advice. And that is worst of all.