Page:The New Arcadia (Tucker).djvu/56

46, owing, too, to our insane attempt to maintain a false appearance."

"A governess, of all things!" interposed her mother, warmly. "I had rather you were a housemaid or cook. Then at least you would receive good wages, and command employment and fair treatment. The desire of so many, when they want to earn their own living, to be governesses and clerks, is prompted by the very same false pride you think you discern elsewhere in society."

"So I believe," admitted the girl, "but you see I could not well be a cook while my father practised as a fashionable doctor. I do not know why, however. It would be more honest than our present mode of living and that of many of our friends. Still I recognize that we must 'keep up appearances' to a certain extent—though I do loathe it all."

"My dear," remarked her father, taking the girl's hand in his, "you shall not go as a cook just yet. Things are not as bad as that; but," he added, "there is no doubt that we must economize, and, moreover, we might, I think, compensate ourselves for less excitement by a little more rational home life and some social occupations."

"Practising on the piano, reading dry books, and carrying soup round to poor people," suggested Hilda, with a toss of the head.

"We can try to be happy and useful," replied the father, "without making fools of ourselves."

"Or nuisances either," suggested Mrs. Courtenay, naïvely. "I consider your ordinary 'charitably-disposed persons' the greatest bores you ever meet. Such dowdies as they are! And there is just as much fuss and sham about them, only of another sort, as with those who do move in decent society. They all hate and envy one