“It ought to be included in every woman’s education,” Madge continued. “It is reserved for spinsters of over forty-five. Susan Fleming wrote an article upon it for the Teacher’s Friend; and spent an afternoon and evening there. A month later she married a grocer with five children. The only sound suggestion for avoiding trouble that I ever came across was in a burlesque of the Blue Bird. You remember the scene where the spirits of the children are waiting to go down to earth and be made into babies? Someone had stuck up a notice at the entrance to the gangway: ‘Don’t get born. It only means worry.’” “Yes,” admitted Joan. “I rather fancied her in it.”!

“God is knocking at your heart, but you will not open to Him. You have filled your hearts with love of self. There is no room for Him to enter in.” They discussed life on two thousand a year; the problems it would present; and Mrs. Phillips became more cheerful. Joan laid herself out to be friendly. She hoped to establish an influence over Mrs. Phillips that should be for the poor lady’s good; and, as she felt instinctively, for poor Phillips’s also. It was not an unpleasing face. Underneath the paint, it was kind and womanly. Joan was sure he would like it better clean. A few months’ attention to diet would make a decent figure of her and improve her wind. Joan watched her spreading the butter a quarter of an inch thick upon her toast and restrained with difficulty the impulse to take it away from her. And her clothes! Joan had seen guys carried through the streets on the fifth of November that were less obtrusive.

One day, after a successful operation, she was tending a young sergeant. He was a well-built, handsome man, with skin as white as a woman’s. He watched her with curious indifference in his eyes as she busied herself, trying to make him comfortable, and did nothing to help her. It could be done. She felt it. If only one could summon up the needful brutality. If only one could stifle that still, small voice of Pity. “But wasn’t that the Lord’s idea,” he said; “when He gave Eve to Adam to be his helpmeet?”