have expected, but I still felt that there was the thread of a little uneasiness through the web of our intercourse,--such a thread of a false colour as one may sometimes find wandering through the labour of the loom, and seek with pains to draw from the woven stuff. But it was for Wynnie to take it out, not for me. And she did not leave it long. For as she bade me good-night in my study, she said suddenly, yet with hesitating openness, “Papa, I told Mr. Percivale that I was sorry I had behaved so badly about the drawings.” “You did right, my child,” I replied. At the same moment a pang of anxiety passed through me lest under the influence of her repentance she should have said anything more than becoming. But I banished the doubt instantly as faithlessness in the womanly instincts of my child. For we men are always so ready and anxious to keep women right, like the wretched creature, Laertes, in _Hamlet_, who reads his sister such a lesson on her maidenly duties, but declines almost with contempt to listen to a word from her as to any co-relative obligation on his side! And here I may remark in regard to one of the vexed questions of the day--the rights of women--that what women demand it is not for men to withhold. It is not their business to lay the law for women. That women must lay down for themselves. I confess that, although I must herein seem to many of my readers old-fashioned and conservative, I should not like to see any woman I cared much for either in parliament or in an anatomical class-room; but on the other hand I feel that women must be left free to settle that matter. If it is not good, good women will find it out and recoil from it. If it is good then God give them good speed. One thing they _have_ a right to--a far wider and more valuable education than they have been in the way of receiving. When the mothers are well taught the generations will grow in knowledge at a fourfold rate. But still the teaching of life is better than all the schools, and common sense than all learning. This common sense is a rare gift, scantier in none than in those who lay claim to it on the ground of following commonplace, worldly, and prudential maxims. But I must return to my Wynnie. “And what did Mr. Percivale say?” I resumed, for she was silent. “He took the blame all on himself, papa.” “Like a gentleman,” I said. “But I could not leave it so, you know, papa, because that was not the truth.” “Well?” “I told him that I had lost my temper from disappointment; that I had thought I did not care for my drawings because I was so far from satisfied with them, but when he made me feel that they were worth nothing, then I found from the vexation I felt that I had cared for them. But I do think, papa, I was more ashamed of having shown them, and vexed with myself, than cross with him. But I was very silly.” “Well, and what did he say?” “He began to praise them then. But you know I could not take much of that, for what could he do?”