"Rubbish!" said Winifred, crossly. "There are just as many before you and Louise as before me. I shall never marry, and you and she will be just as much concerned in the management of things some day as I." "Perhaps," said Celia, "but not just yet, in any case. And yet--as I was going to say--I don't quite see at present what is right for me to do. If there are many difficulties in the way, if it would cause unhappiness at home, perhaps it would be my duty to wait--to wait even for the testing myself," and she sighed. "I don't want to leave home for the sake of leaving home, but I do want to know if I am deceiving myself in thinking I _have_ a gift. And father and mother are so kind and reasonable. I don't think I need give up the idea." "You are very selfish, dreadfully selfish, though perhaps you don't know it," said Winifred. "You would make out that what _you_ want is right just because you want it. But I, many years older than you, who have thought over these questions for the last ten years--" "You are not many years older than I, and ten years ago you were _ever_ so much younger than I am now. You were a child," interrupted Celia. "--Who have thought about these questions ever since I could think at all," Winifred resumed calmly--for, to do her justice, she was by no means bad-tempered, and seldom lost her self-control--"am to give up my deepest and most cherished hopes, because--no, I really can't say why! Because I want to leave the beaten track, I suppose." "You won't see things any other way," said Celia, "so it's no use talking about it. Perhaps it may be best for you to try the experiment, though in a different way from me. Anyway, don't let us quarrel about it, whatever we do, dearest Winifred. Of course your coming to live in London would make it all infinitely nicer for me, if," and a troubled expression crossed her face, "if it is really right for us both to leave home." "There is Louise at home. She asks nothing better than to jog-trot along for ever in the same monotonous way. She is an anachronism. She would have been perfectly happy a hundred years ago, or even longer ago than that, when it never occurred to any one that a woman _could_ want anything more exciting than her spinning-wheel and her tapestry-frame." "Or her napery press and pot-pourri jars," added Celia, with a smile. "Well, after all, there is to me a wonderful charm about those days; there must have been a great deal of tenderness and delicacy about a lady's life, which get rubbed off nowadays. And there is a good deal of sense in what Louise says. Monotony is not the worst evil. Why, lots of married women have monotonous lives." "If they have, it has been of their own choice," said Winifred. "What I complain of is the being condemned to narrowness and dullness if you don't marry. Short of marriage, a girl is allowed no other possibility of outlet."