"I don't know. It seems rude to say so, perhaps, but they find a world ready made to knock round _in_, don't they? And it is because there's so much done that they couldn't have done themselves, that they find the chances waiting for them that they do. And the chances are multiplying with civilization, all the time. You see the question really goes back to first conditions, and lies upon the fact that first conditions may come back any day,--do come back, here and there, continually. Put man and woman together on the primitive earth, and it is the man that has got to subdue it; the woman is what Scripture calls her,--the helpmeet. And my notion is that if everything was right, a woman never should have to 'knock round alone.' It isn't the real order of Providence. I think Providence has been very much interfered with." "There are widows," said Rachel, gently. "Yes; and the 'fatherless and the widows' are everybody's charge to care for. I said--if things were right. I wish the energy was spent in bringing round the right that is used up in fitting things to the wrong." "They say there are too many women in the world altogether!" said Marion, squarely. "I guess not--for all the little children," said Frank Sunderline; and his tone sounded suddenly sweet and tender. He was helping them out of the car, now, at the village station, and they went up the long steps to the street. All three walked on without more remark, for a little way. Then Marion broke out in her odd fashion,-- "Ray Ingraham! you've got a home and everything sure and comfortable. Just tell me what you'd do, if you were a widow and fatherless or anything, and nobody took you in charge." "The thing I knew best, I suppose," said Rachel, quietly. "I think very likely I could be--a baker. But I'm certain of this much," she added lightly. "I never would make a brick loaf; that always seemed to me a man's perversion of the idea of bread." A small boy was coming down the street toward them as she spoke, from the bake-shop door; a brick loaf sticking out at the two ends of an insufficient wrap of yellow brown paper under his arm. As Ray glanced on beyond him, she caught sight of that which put the brick loaf, and their talk, instantly out of her mind. The doctor's chaise,--the horse fastened by the well-known strap and weight,--was standing before the house. She quickened her steps, without speaking. "I say," called out the urchin at the same moment, looking up at her as he passed by with a queer expression of mixed curiosity and knowing eagerness,--"Yer know yer father's sick? Fit--or sunthin'!" But Ray made no sign--to anybody. She had already hurried in toward the side door, through the yard, under the elm.