"Yes, brings you. What's the good of working day and night, toiling into the small hours of the morning for a lot of other people? What do they ever do for you, mother?" "Do for me?" Regina seemed suddenly to have become an echo of her own daughter. "I don't know that anybody does anything for me." "No, it is always Mrs. Albert Whittaker toiling and fagging and slaving for other people's glorification. I don't see the force of it. It seems to us," she went on, with a certain air of severity which ought to have amused Regina, but did nothing of the kind, "it seems to us that you get the worst of it in every way. We think, mother, that you ought to be very glad that we have come home to take care of you." "Oh! Then you," said Regina, with a tinge of sarcasm in her tones, "you and Maudie are to have all the independence, and I am to be taken care of? That is very kind of you. Now, once for all let me speak, and then for ever after hold my peace. I give you, as long as you remain in your father's house, I give you the same amount of liberty that I had in mine and which I wish to have for myself now, but I give it you on one condition, which is that you never abuse it. If ever you should disappoint me by doing so--which not for one moment do I anticipate--I should instantly withdraw that free gift of liberty. But I want you to remember that while you have your liberty, I still need and require mine. One is so apt to forget, and particularly when one is devotedly attached to anyone, the rights and liberties of others. You are quite welcome, my children, to have your day at home, and your father will certainly not wish to curtail you in the matter of provision therefor. I shall not expect that your little entertainments will come out of your own personal income. At any time that you seek my advice on any matter, it will be there ready for your use. I shall never give it to you unsought, unless I should see you going absolutely wrong. I will only ask you to remember that before all things I have striven, since you were tiny babies, first and foremost to preserve the originality of your minds. The more original you are, the more completely will you please me. There is so much in the circumstances and in the lives of women that tend to trammel and to stifle their better judgment and their better selves, that they have but little chance of letting any originality of mind which they may possess have fair play. You are singularly blessed in having an enlightened father and mother, who wish you to be in most respects as free as air. Take care, therefore, children, that you don't lose sight of this precious opportunity. Let honor and originality go hand in hand. With your gifts and your beauty, you must land yourselves upon the very crest of the wave. There," she went on, letting the tension of her feelings find relief in a little laugh, "there ends my little homily!" And she stretched forth her firm white hand and helped