you must take trouble--aye, and never-ending trouble--about them, unless you wish to join the ranks of those who are always abusing their maids and yet would not lift their fingers to assist themselves. And then, again, you must undoubtedly train yourself at the same time not to expect perfection. Think of our own girls. Are they always to be trusted at tennis and at balls to maintain that serene and demure deportment which of course we always did, and which we naturally expect from our daughters, especially where young men are concerned? Do they never flirt? Are they never found missing at critical moments, for example, when the carriage is at the door, and Paterfamilias is divided between anxiety for his horses and wrath at being kept waiting? Do foolish little notes never pass? Are flowers never given to the most detrimental youths of one’s acquaintance? And finally, do our own daughters always keep men at arm’s length? Are they always truthful, always obliging, always careful about their own rooms and the things which are committed to their charge? I leave each mother to answer for her own daughters. I should not like to answer for all the girls I know, and I seem to remember episodes in my own past (was it mine, or did it belong to some one I once knew very well indeed, I wonder?) which I should rather not confide to my daughter, and indeed which I should not care to hold up to her as an example of what all girls should do, and which often make me very kind to the maids when I meet them promenading with the youth who calls for orders or the man whom I scarcely recognise out of his livery; and it is far better to know such things will happen, and to keep a kindly eye over these affairs, than to scold vigorously and declare that whatever happens no followers of any sort or kind shall enter your chaste abode. Neither should they until the engagement is a _bonâ-fide_ one, and one that you know is allowed and smiled upon by the girl’s parents. This you should ascertain for yourself--another reason for taking your maids young and from a family of whose antecedents you know something from your own observation. And I never think much harm can happen from these promenades if great stress is laid upon the fact that all must be at home after dark, and that in winter no one must stay out after 8.30. Then the house door should be locked and the key brought upstairs, either in town or country; there is always the front door to come to, and there is no reason why everyone should not come to that.