"If I could imagine Marion consenting." I said, "I know what she would answer to that question. She would say, Why should her children be better off than the children about them? She would say that the children must share the life and work of their parents." "And I think she would be right, though the obvious rejoinder would be, 'You may waive your own social privileges, and sacrifice yourselves to the good of others; but have you a right to sacrifice your children, and heap disadvantages on their future?'" "Now give us the answer on the other side, seeing you think Marion would be right after all." "Marion's answer would, I think, be, that their children would be God's children; and he couldn't desire better for them than to be born in lowly conditions, and trained from the first to give themselves to the service of their fellows, seeing that in so far their history would resemble that of his own Son, our Saviour. In sacrificing their earthly future, as men would call it, their parents would but be furthering their eternal good." "That would be enough in regard of such objections. But there would be a previous one on Marion's own part. How would her new position affect her ministrations?" "There can be no doubt, I think," Lady Bernard replied, "that what her friends would lose thereby--I mean, what amount of her personal ministrations would be turned aside from them by the necessities of her new position--would be far more than made up to them by the presence among them of a whole well-ordered and growing family, instead of a single woman only. But all this jet leaves something for her more personal friends to consider,--as regards their duty in the matter. It naturally sets them on the track of finding out what could be done to secure for the children of such parents the possession of early advantages as little lower than those their parents had as may be; for the breed of good people ought, as much as possible, to be kept up. I will turn the thing over in my mind, and let you know what comes of it."