Mrs Murchison
would have been "sorry for the man"--she maintained a
candour toward and about those belonging to her that
permitted no illusions--but she would have stood cheerfully
out of the way on her own account. When you have seen
your daughter reach and pass the age of twenty-five
without having learned properly to make her own bed, you
know without being told that she will never be fit for
the management of a house--don't you? Very well then.
And for ever and for ever, no matter what there was to
do, with a book in her hand--Mrs Murchison would put an
emphasis on the "book" which scarcely concealed a contempt
for such absorption. And if, at the end of your patience,
you told her for any sake to put it down and attend to
matters, obeying in a kind of dream that generally drove
you to take the thing out of her hands and do it yourself,
rather than jump out of your skin watching her.
Sincerely Mrs Murchison would have been sorry for the
man if he had arrived, but he had not arrived. Advena
justified her existence by taking the university course
for women at Toronto, and afterward teaching the English
branches to the junior forms in the Collegiate Institute,
which placed her arbitrarily outside the sphere of domestic
criticism. Mrs Murchison was thankful to have her there
--outside--where little more could reasonably be expected
of her than that she should be down in time for breakfast.
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