"Now that I am safely married and all that, I may make use of your Christian name, with the affectionate adjective, I suppose. The adverb in the first line was part of the congratulation of my great-aunt, who evidently thought that any girl with a decent amount of go in her, who did not habitually confine herself to phrases out of Mrs. Hannah More's works and read the _Young Lady's Companion_, was likely to end up with marrying an actor or an artist, whose useful and more or less ornamental professions she regarded as being much of a muchness with those of a music or dancing master. "Well, one of the advantages of my present 'safe' and dignified position is that I can have friends, even if they happen to be young men, and give them advice. This I used to do before, as you know, though as it were under protest. 'This is all very fine,' I can hear you say, 'but why can't she leave off writing about herself, and tell me about--about--why, of course, Hypatia Tollemache. Is she "safely" married (hateful word!), gone into a sisterhood, started for Northern India to explore the Zenanas, and teach the unwilling "lights of the harems" what they can't understand, and wouldn't want if they did?' None of these things have happened as yet, though they are all on the cards. She tried 'slumming' for a time, but her health broke down, and she had a bad time with scarlet fever. I made her come and stay with me after she was convalescent, and oh, how deadly white and weak she was!--she that was such a tennis crack, and could walk like a gamekeeper. I tried with delicacy and tact (for which, you know, I was always famous!) to draw her about your chances--say in five years or so. But she would not rise. Said, 'people were not sent into the world to enjoy themselves selfishly,' or some such bosh; that she had her appointed work, and as long as God gave her strength she would expend what poor gifts He had endowed her with, or die at her post; that in contrast with the benefits to thousands of our suffering fellow-creatures which one earnest worker might produce, how small and mean seemed the conventional marriage, with its margin narrowed to household cares, a husband and children! Were there not whole continents of our poor, deprived not only of decent food, raiment, lodging, by the merciless Juggernaut of inherited social injustice, but of the knowledge which every adult of a civilized community should enjoy without cost? And should any man or woman, to whom God has granted a luxurious portion of the blessings of life, stand by and refuse aid, the aid of time and personal gifts, to save these perishing multitudes? When a girl begins to talk in this way, we know how it will end. In the uniform of a hospital nurse; in a premature funeral; in marriage with a philanthropist, half fanatic, half adventurer: what Harry calls a 'worm' of some