“Well, ma’am, my husband he’s dead, been dead this six years now, and left me with four to feed, and—­well, I don’t know just how to begin, rightly.  You see, it’s this way.  Celandine, my eldest,—­that was his name for her; he had a right pretty knack at names, and was always for names that ran easy,—­Celandine she’s eighteen now, ‘n’ she wants to be doing something for herself.  It drives me real hard to pay for all four of them out of a sewing-machine and the little I make selling candies over a counter,—­five cents’ worth of chocolate drops and penny’s-worths of yellow taffy; never more than fifty cents a day, living where we do, in Pulaski Street,—­and Celandine she’s bound to help me some way.  The next oldest to Celandine is on’y ten; and if I was to starve I wouldn’t have him to sell papers or black boots, and his father a foreman; and the’ ain’t no call for office-boys nowadays, ’r else it’s because Augustus is so small for his age—­”

“We have an office-boy,” murmured Mrs. Tarbell.

“I know, ma’am,” said Mrs. Stiles.  “Leastways, I guessed as much.  I was thinking of asking you about Celandine.”  Mrs. Tarbell stirred uneasily, and Mrs. Stiles hurried on:  “Celandine and me we were talking things over the other day,—­we’ve been reading about you in the newspapers, Mrs. Tarbell, nigh on to four years now; Celandine has always been a comprehending child, precocious, as they say, and quick-witted, and she’s been watching your career, ma’am, just as clost as you could yourself.  And the day you was admitted she come home,—­a friend of hers gave her the afternoon paper,—­and she says, ‘Mother,’ she says, ’Mrs. Tarbell is admitted!’—­just like it was a personal friend of yours, Mrs. Tarbell; and reely, ma’am, I suppose I oughtn’t to say it, but there’s been a good many women all over this country felt themselves personal friends of yours, ma’am, knowing how much there was meant by your success and feeling how near the question come to themselves; and if good wishes brings good luck, that’s what you have to thank for succeeding.  But Celandine she’s an ambitious girl, Mrs, Tarbell, and the long and the short of it is just this, that she’s set her heart on being a lawyer, and she’s either too shy or too proud, mebbe, to come here with me to speak to you, ma’am:  so I just put on my bunnit the first day I could, rain or shine, and rain it’s turned out to be, to say a word to you about her and just ask you what you thought.”

“A lawyer?” gasped Mrs. Tarbell.

“Yes, ma’am; a lady lawyer.”

Mrs. Tarbell had never a word to say.  In spite of having triumphed over all the arguments, both those epicene and those particularly masculine, which had been used against herself, she had not now the strength of mind to use them in her turn.  In spite of being a lawyer, she had a conscience.  She had looked forward to taking students, but they were all to have been Portias, every woman Jane of them; and