“That sounds vaguely familiar,” said Mrs. Lloyd.

“Woman’s sphere?  Yes, we hate the sound of it,” said Mrs. Burgoyne, “just as a man who has left his family hates to talk of home ties, and just as a deserter hates the conversation to come around to the army.  But it’s true.  Our business is children, and kitchens, and husbands, and meals, and we detest it all—­”

“I like my husband a little,” said Mrs. Brown, in a meek little voice.

They all laughed.  Then said Mrs. Lloyd, gazing sentimentally toward the river bank, where her small daughter’s twisted curls were tossing madly in a game of “tag”: 

“I shall henceforth regard Mabel as a possible Joan of Arc.”

“One of those boys may be a Lincoln, or a Thomas Edison, or a Mark Twain,” Sidney Burgoyne added, half-laughing, “and then we’ll feel just a little ashamed for having turned him complacently over to a nurse or a boarding school.  Of course, it leaves us free to go to the club and hear a paper on the childhood of Napoleon, carefully compiled years after his death.  Why, men take heavy chances in their work, they follow up the slightest opening, but we women throw away opportunities to be great, every day of our lives!  Scientists and theorists are spending years of their lives pondering over every separate phase of the development of children, but we, who have the actual material in our hands, turn it over to nursemaids!”

“Yes, but lots of children disappoint their parents bitterly,” said Mrs. Brown, “and lots of good mothers have bad children!”

“I never knew a good mother to have a bad child—­” began Mrs. Burgoyne.

“Well, I have.  Thousands,” Mrs. Lloyd said promptly.

“Oh, no!  Not a bad child,” her hostess said, quickly.  “A disappointing child perhaps, or a strong-willed child, you mean.  But no good mother—­and that doesn’t mean merely a good woman, or a church-going woman!—­could possibly have a really bad child.  ’By their fruits,’ you know.  And then of course we haven’t a perfect system of nursery training yet; we expect angels.  We judge by little, inessential things, we’re exacting about unimportant trifles.  We don’t want our sons to marry little fluffy-headed dolls, although the dolls may make them very good wives.  We don’t want them to make a success of real estate, if the tradition of the house is for the bar or the practice of medicine.  And we lose heart at the first suspicion of bad company, or of drinking; although the best men in the world had those temptations to fight!  But, anyway, I would rather try at that and fail, than do anything else in the world.  My failures at least might save some other woman’s children.  And it’s just that much more done for the world than guarding the valuable life of a Pomeranian, or going to New York for new furs!” They all laughed, for Mrs. Willard White’s latest announcement of her plans had awakened some comment among them.