L. (disdaining reply). There are, of course, certain crises of fortune when one has to take care of oneself, and mind shrewdly what one is about. There is never any real doubt about the path, but you may have to walk very slowly. MARY. And if one is forced to do a wrong thing by some one who has authority over you? L. My dear, no one can be forced to do a wrong thing, for the guilt is in the will: but you may any day be forced to do a fatal thing, as you might be forced to take poison; the remarkable law of nature in such cases being, that it is always unfortunate YOU who are poisoned, and not the person who gives you the dose. It is a very strange law, but it IS a law. Nature merely sees to the carrying out of the normal operation of arsenic. She never troubles herself to ask who gave it you. So also you may be starved to death, morally as well as physically, by other people's faults. You are, on the whole, very good children sitting here to- day; do you think that your goodness comes all by your own contriving? or that you are gentle and kind because your dispositions are naturally more angelic than those of the poor girls who are playing, with wild eyes, on the dust-heaps in the alleys of our great towns; and who will one day fill their prisons,--or, better, their graves? Heaven only knows where they, and we who have cast them there shall stand at last But the main judgment question will be, I suppose, for all of us, "Did you keep a good heart through it? What you were, others may answer for,-- what you tried to be, you must answer for yourself. Was the heart pure and true--tell us that? And so we come back to your sorrowful question, Lucilla, which I put aside a little ago. You would be afraid to answer that your heart WAS pure and true, would not you? LUCILLA. Yes, indeed, sir. L. Because you have been taught that it is all evil--"only evil continually." Somehow, often as people say that, they never seem, to me, to believe it. Do you really believe it? LUCILLA. Yes, sir, I hope so. L. That you have an entirely bad heart? LUCILLA (a little uncomfortable at the substitution of the monosyllable for the dissyllable, nevertheless persisting in her orthodoxy). Yes, sir. L. Florrie, I am sure you are tired; I never like you to stay when you are tired; but, you know, you must not play with the kitten while we're talking. FLORRIE. Oh! but I'm not tired, and I'm only nursing her. She'll be asleep in my lap, directly. L. Stop! that puts me in mind of something I had to show you, about minerals that are like hair I want a hair out of Tittie's tail. FLORRIE. (quite rude in her surprise, even to the point of repeating expressions). Out of Tittie's tail! L. Yes, a brown one Lucilla, you can get at the tip of it nicely, under Florrie's arm, just pull one out for me. LUCILLA. Oh! but, sir, it will hurt her so! L. Never mind, she can't scratch you while Florrie is holding her. Now that I think of it you had better pull out two.