"More than sufficiently. That's one trouble--she's had, at times, a depressing, sponge-like desire for absorbing all sorts of irrelevant things that no girl ought to concern herself with. I--to tell the truth--if I had not rigorously drilled her--she might have become a trifle tiresome; I don't mean precisely frumpy--but one of those earnest young things whose intellectual conversation becomes a visitation--one of the wants-to-know-for-the-sake-of-knowledge sort--a dreadful human blotter! Oh, dear; show me a girl with her mind soaking up 'isms' and I'll show you a social failure with a wisp of hair on her cheek, who looks the dowdier the more expensively she's gowned." "So you believe you've got that wisp of copper-tinted hair tucked up snugly?" asked Selwyn, amused. "I--it's still a worry to me; at intervals she's inclined to let it slop. Thank Heaven, I've made her spine permanently straight and her head is screwed properly to her neck. There's not a slump to her from crown to heel--_I_ know, you know. She's had specialists to forestall every blemish. I made up my mind to do it; I'm doing it for my own babies. That's what a mother is for--to turn out her offspring to the world as flawless and wholesome as when they came into it!--physically and mentally sound--or a woman betrays her stewardship. They must be as healthy of body and limb as they are innocent and wholesome minded. The happiest of all creatures are drilled thoroughbreds. Show me a young girl, unspoiled mentally and spiritually untroubled, with a superb physique, and I'll show you a girl equipped for the happiness of this world. And that is what Eileen is." "I should say," observed Selwyn, "that she's equipped for the slaughter of man." "Yes, but _I_ am selecting the victim," replied his sister demurely. "Oh! Have you? Already?" "Tentatively." "Who?" "Sudbury Gray, I think--with Scott Innis for an understudy--perhaps the Draymore man as alternate--I don't know; there's time." "Plenty," he said vaguely, staring into the fire where a log had collapsed into incandescent ashes. She continued to talk about Eileen until she noticed that his mind was on other matters--his preoccupied stare enlightened her. She said nothing for a while. But he woke up when Austin came in and settled his big body in a chair. "Drina, the little minx, called me back on some flimsy pretext," he said, relighting his cigar; "I forgot that time was going--and she was wily enough to keep me talking until Miss Paisely caught me at it and showed me out. I tell you," turning on Selwyn--"children are what make life worth wh--" He ceased abruptly at a gentle tap from his wife's foot, and Selwyn looked up. Whether or not he divined the interference he said very quietly: "I'd rather have had children than anything in the world. They're about the best there is in life; I agree with you, Austin."