Page:Arminell, a social romance (1896).djvu/431

Rh was hard to say which of the two babes was the most incapable, exacting, fractious, and insatiable. The maid-of-all-work lost what little head she had, and her temper went along with her head. When, finally, it became clear that the corpulent, middle-aged baby drank something stronger than milk, Arminell asked to have her dismissed, and undertook to attend to Mrs. Welsh and the baby for the remaining fortnight.

Thus Arminell fell into the position of a nurse.

That was another item in the framing.

But there were other adjustments went to the framing. Arminell's superciliousness, her pride of intellect, her self-will, required much paring down. Formerly she had treated what was common-place and humdrum with contempt as beneath the regard of one gifted with intelligence. Now she began to acknowledge that it was in the fulfilment of humdrum duties, and in the accomplishment of common-place obligations that the dignity and heroism of life lay.

Arminell had been accustomed to criticise severely those with whom she associated, and to laugh at their weaknesses; and now she had learned her own weakness, the disposition to laugh at others had departed from her, and was replaced by great forbearance.

She began to wonder whether the regeneration of society was to be effected by revolutionary methods, and was not best accomplished by the slow processes of leavening with human charity.

How often had she supposed that happiness was impossible apart from the amenities of life, that in the middle class, with its imperfect culture and narrow aims, there could be no true felicity; that in the lowest classes, where there was no refinement of taste, no polish of mind, no discipline of intellect, life must be insupportable in its wretchedness. But now she saw that happiness was of