The man shook his head.

“I’d like to—­but—­”

“But what?”

“You see there’s a whole lot to think about,” the lawyer went on seriously.  “Why, I don’t even know how to get through my interview with her to-day without lying to her like a politician.  Now just get a look at the position.  Here’s a girl, a beautiful, high-spirited girl of sixteen, straight out from college, at the beginning of life, with her, head full of ‘whys,’ and ‘wherefores.’  Sixteen’s well-nigh grown up these days, mind you.  Her mother’s dead, and curiously the fact didn’t seem to break her up as you’d have expected it to.  Why?” The man shrugged.  “It’s not because she lacks feeling.  Oh, no.  Maybe it’s because of the strength of those feelings.  Remember her mother married Leslie when the child was thirteen.  A good understanding age.  She was never allowed to see her father.  No.  She was packed off to school and kept there—­”

“Yes, I know,” Sarah broke in, with impatient warmth.  “And just at the time a girl most needs she never even saw her mother for over three years.  God doesn’t give us women our babies to treat them as if they weren’t our own flesh and blood.  Young Nancy was left to those maiden dames at college, who don’t know more about a child than is laid down by highbrow officials in the text books they need to study to qualify for their posts.  They haven’t a notion beyond stuffing her poor wee head with the sort of view of life set down in fool history books.  They say she’s clever and bright.  Well, that’s all they care about.  When they’ve done with her they’ll have knocked all the girl out of her, and turned her adrift on the world behind a pair of disfiguring spectacles, with her beautiful hair all scratched back off her pretty face, and maybe ‘bobbed,’ and they’ll fill her grips with pamphlets and literature enough to stock a patent med’cine factory, instead of the lawn, and lace, and silk a girl should think about, and leave her with as much chance of getting happily married as a queen mummy of the Egyptians.  It’s a shame, just a real shame.  Why, if that poor, lonesome child came right along to me, I’d—­”

“Teach her all the bright tricks of hunting down a husband and—­hooking him.”  The lawyer shook his head and smiled.  “You know, Sally, you’re almost an outrage on the subject of marriage.  Sometimes I wonder the sort of tricks I was up against when I—­”

A plump warning finger and smiling threat interrupted the laughing charge.

“You were due at the office long ago, Charles,” his wife admonished.  “If you aren’t careful I’ll have to pack you off right away.”

“That’s all right, Sally,” the man demurred.  “I won’t go further with that.  I’ll get back to the things I was saying before you interrupted.”  His pale blue eyes became serious again.  “Do you think Nancy didn’t understand why she was packed off to school—­and kept there?  Of course she did.  She knew she wasn’t wanted.