I know the majority of women would feel that a single woman of good standing and ungossiped reputation was a safe and desirable protector for a young girl.

The same majority would hesitate to send their girls away with a divorced woman.

But as I remarked in the beginning, I have stood outside the fray and watched similar ventures, and I have grown to realize that it is not mere respectability and chastity in a woman which make her a safe chaperon for a young girl,—­it is a deep, full, broad understanding of temperaments and temptations.

Had I a daughter or a sister like your sweet Millie, I would not allow her to live one year under the dominion of such a woman as Miss Brown for any consideration.  Why? because Miss Brown is all brain and bigotry.  She is narrow and high, not deep and broad.

She is so orthodox that she incites heresy in the rebellious mind of independent youth.  She is so moral she makes one long for adventure.  She would not listen to any questioning of old traditions, or any speculative philosophizing of a curious young mind, and she would be intolerant with any girl who showed an inclination to flirt or be indiscreet.

Your sister Millie is as coquettish as the rose that lifts its fair face to the sun, and the breeze, and the bee, and expects to be admired.  She is as innocent as the rose, too, but that fact Miss Brown would never associate with coquetry.

She would class it with vulgarity and degeneracy.  Miss Brown is a handsome woman, but she has no sex instincts.  She does not believe with the scientist, “that in the process of evolution it is only with the coming of the sex relation that life is enabled to rise to higher forms.”

She believes in brain and spirit, and is utterly devoid of that feminine impulse to make herself attractive to men, and wholly incapable of understanding the fascination that Folly holds out to youth.  She has never experienced any temptation, and she would be shocked at any girl who fell below her standard.

She would carefully protect Millie from danger by high walls, but she would never eradicate the danger impulse from her nature by sympathetic counsel, as a more human woman could.

Mrs. Walton is a much better guide for your sister.

She ran away from boarding-school at seventeen, and married the reckless son of a rich man.  She had a stepmother of the traditional type, and had never known a happy home life.  She was of a loving and trusting and at the same time a coquettish nature, and she attracted young Walton’s eye while out for a walk with a “Miss Brown” order of duenna.  The duenna saw the little embryo flirtation, and became very much horrified, and preached the girl a long sermon, and set a close watch upon her actions.

There was no wise, loving guidance of a young girl’s life barque from the reefs of adventure.  It was homily and force.  The result was, that the girl escaped from school before six weeks passed, and married her admirer.