Page:The Yellow Book - 03.djvu/25

 as though it were hard to part from her. Wicked Trix stands out as bold leader of one bad band. Tess belongs to the family, though she is of another branch; so does Cathy of Wuthering Heights, and Lyndall of the African Farm; whilst latest and slightest scamp of the lot comes dancing Dodo of Lambeth. Save in a strictly specialised sense, none of this class can be said to contrive the greatest good of the greatest number. These are the women to whom the nursery is at best but an interlude, and at worst a real interruption of their life's strongest interests. They are not skilled in dealing with early teething troubles, nor in the rival merits of Welsh and Saxony flannel stuffs. Their crass ignorance of all this deep lore may, it is true, go far to kill off superfluous offspring, but, unjust as it would appear, these are the mothers who each succeeding year become more and more adored of their sons. Fribblers though they be, they sweeten the world's corners with the perfume of their charm. And the bit of world's work in which they excel is the keeping alive the tradition of woman's witchery. Who, then, can deny them their plain uses? When Fate is kind and bestows the fitting partner, the fires of their love never die down. They remain lovers to the end. Their husbands need fear no rival, not even in the person of their own superior son. When Fate is unkind and things go crookedly, these are the women whose wreckage strews life's high road, and from whom their wiser sisters turn reprovingly away. For the good woman who has to "work for her living," and who pretends to enjoy the healthful after-pains in her moral system, is rarely tolerant of the existence of the leichtsinnïge sister for whom, as to Elijah at the brook, dainty morsels without labour are cheerfully provided by that inconsequent raven, man. This lady goes gaily, wearing what she has not spun, reaping where she has not sown. Sad reflections these for the high-souled woman whose enlightened