She had been to Girton, and to a journalistic school, and Mr. D'Auban's dancing academy, and to Klondike--where all her hair got cut off, so that she hasn't enough to spread over the pillow now--and behind the scenes at a music-hall, and a month on the stage, and edited a paper once and wrote a novel. All before she was thirty! At every new arrangement for amusement she made her people opposed her, and prayed for her in church. But she always got her own way in the end. Her mother, Mrs. Stephen Cadwallis Mander, came here to sniff about when George first took Christina on. She is a woman of the world, tortoise-shell _pince-nez_ and all, but she took to Mother at first sight, and talked to her quite naturally about this "new move of dear Christina's." She spoke in a neat, sighing voice, and told us that Christina had developed early, and was so different to her other children; she kept on saying the name of George's new magazine, as if it shocked her very much. "_Wild Oats!_ Such a crude name! Though I suppose she must sow them somewhere, and best, perhaps, in the pages of a magazine. You'll look after her, won't you? Is there any danger"--she looked towards the study-door"--of her falling in love with her employer?" She laughed carelessly. "Not the slightest!" said Mother, laughing too. "She will have her eyes opened, that's all, to the seamy side of artistic life." "My daughter is so absurdly curious about that wretched seamy side. After all, it's only the side that the workers leave the knots on, they must be somewhere, just as plates must be washed up in a scullery. But we don't need to go in and gloat on the horrid sight!" "I quite agree with you," said Mother. "Only if one happens to be the scullery-maid----" Aunt Gerty came in just then and took her part in the conversation. I was glad to see she was dressed more quietly than usual. "And," said Mrs. Mander, "she buys everything that comes out, especially badly-executed magazines that talk about the fore-front of progress and look just as if they were produced in the dark ages. I know that she came to your husband entirely because she wanted to help to edit his magazine--_Wild Oats_. Is not that its name? From what Chris says, it sounds so _very_ advanced!" "Oh, very," said Aunt Gerty. "But it won't live!" "You don't say so?" Mrs. Mander put up her _pince-nez_ and looked at Aunt Gerty, whom she already didn't like. "None of my brother-in-law's things do!" Aunt Gerty went on calmly. "He is a prize wrecker--of women and magazines!" Mrs. Mander looked startled, and Mother tried to change the conversation. "Oh, he's a law unto himself, my brother-in-law is," went on Aunt Gerty. "But I don't think he'll convert Miss Mander to his views." "I hope not," said Mrs. Mander, "for I notice that if you make a law unto yourself, you generally have to make a society unto yourself too! At least as far as women are concerned."