"New England, I suppose," Elizabeth answered wearily. "But I have no New England conscience, mama. I have very little conscience at all, and as for my duty, I almost never do it. I am perfectly aware that if I did my duty I should lead an entirely different life; but I don’t; I go on weakly, day after day, year after year, leading a perfectly useless existence, surrounded by wholly artificial duties, and now these same artificial duties keep me from performing my real duty--which, just now, seems to me to go and see poor little Gusta." Mrs. Ward was more disturbed, now that her daughter saw her duty, than she had been a moment before, when she had declared she could not see it. "I do wish you could be like other girls," she said, speaking her thought as her habit was. "I am," said Elizabeth, "am I not?" "Well," Mrs. Ward qualified. "In all except one thing." Mrs. Ward looked her question. "I’m not getting married very fast." "No," said Mrs. Ward. Elizabeth laughed for the first time that morning. "You dear little mother, I really believe you’re anxious to get rid of me!" "Why, Elizabeth!" said Mrs. Ward, lifting her eyes and then lowering them suddenly, in her reproach. "How can you say such a thing!" "But never mind," Elizabeth went on: "’If no one ever marries me I sha’n’t mind very much; I shall buy a squirrel in a cage and a little rabbit hutch. I shall have a cottage in a wood, and a pony all my own, And a little lamb quite clean and tame that I can take to town. And when I’m getting really old--at twenty-eight or nine-- I shall buy a little orphan girl and bring her up as mine." She smiled as she finished her quotation, and then suddenly sobered as she said: "I’m twenty-seven already!" "Who wrote that?" asked Mrs. Ward. "Alma-Tadema." "Oh! I thought Mr. Marriott might have done it. It’s certainly very silly." Nora had brought her breakfast, and the action recalled Gusta to Elizabeth. "What did papa say--about my going to the prison?" "He said," Mrs. Ward began gladly, "that, of course, we all felt very sorry for Gusta, but that you couldn’t go _there_. He said it would be absurd; that you don’t understand." Mrs. Ward was silent for a moment, knowing how much greater the father’s influence was than her own. She was glad that Elizabeth seemed altogether docile and practicable this morning. "There’s a good girl now," Mrs. Ward added in the hope of pressing her advantage home. Elizabeth gave a little start of irritability. "I wish you wouldn’t talk to me in that way, mama. I’m not a child." "But surely your father knows best, dear," the mother insisted, "more than--we do." "Not necessarily," said Elizabeth. "Why! How can you say so!" exclaimed Mrs. Ward, who bowed to all authority as a part of her religion. "Papa takes merely the conventional view," Elizabeth went on, "and the conventional view is taken without thought."