“I suppose it is admitted that the highest faculty of man is worship,” remarked Sophia, suggesting that he was not speaking to the point; “but that is no reason why a boy with a head for figures should be made a farmer, or that a young woman with special ability should remain a maid-of-all-work.”

“And what of the affections—­love for children, and for other women better than herself?  A girl who has such privileges as this girl had with you has a far better chance of doing well than in a public hotel, even if that were a safe place for her.”

Possibly Sophia thought her companion showed too great sensibility concerning Eliza’s privileges, for she did not take notice of any but the last part of his sentence.

“It is a safe place for her; for she is able to take care of herself anywhere, if she chooses; and if she doesn’t choose, no place is safe.  Besides, you know, the place is a boarding-house really, rather than an hotel.”

“I am not so surprised at the view you take of it, for you will do more than any one else to supply her place.”

This, Trenholme’s feeling prophecy, was quite true.  Sophia did do more of Eliza’s work than any one.  She spared her younger sisters because she wanted them to be happy.

In spite of this, however, Sophia was not so much in need of some one’s sympathy as were those younger girls, who had less work to do.  A large element in happiness is the satisfaction of one’s craving for romance.  Now, there are three eras of romance in human life.  The first is childhood, when, even if the mind is not filled with fictitious fairy tales which clothe nature, life is itself a fairy tale, a journey through an unexplored region, an enterprise full of effort and wonder, big with hope, an endless expectation, to which trivial realisations seem large.  It was in this era that the younger Rexford children, up to Winifred, still lived; they built snow-men, half-expecting, when they finished them in the gloaming, that the thing of their creation would turn and pursue them; they learned to guide toboggans with a trailing toe, and half dreamed that their steeds were alive when they felt them bound and strain, so perfectly did they respond to the rider’s will.  Sophia, again, had reached the third epoch of romance, when, at a certain age, people make the discovery of the wondrous loveliness in the face of the Lady Duty, and, putting a hand in hers, go onward, thinking nothing hard because of her beauty.  But it is admitted by all that there is often a stage between these two, when all the romance of life is summed up in the hackneyed word “love.”  The pretty girls who were nicknamed Blue and Red had outgrown childhood, and they saw no particular charm in work; they were very dull, and scarce knew why, except that they half envied Eliza, who had gone to the hotel, and who, it was well known, had a suitor in the person of Mr. Cyril Harkness, the Philadelphian dentist.