L. So I am, and so you ought all to be.  I can read her over and over again, without ever tiring; there’s no one whose every page is so full, and so delightful, no one who brings you into the company of pleasanter or wiser people; no one who tells you more truly how to do right.  And it is very nice, in the midst of a wild world, to have the very ideal of poetical justice done always to one’s hand:—­to have everybody found out, who tells lies; and everybody decorated with a red riband, who doesn’t; and to see the good Laura, who gave away her half sovereign, receiving a grand ovation from an entire dinner party disturbed for the purpose; and poor, dear, little Rosamond, who chooses purple jars instead of new shoes, left at last without either her shoes or her bottle.  But it isn’t life:  and, in the way children might easily understand it, it isn’t morals.

Jessie.  How do you mean we might understand it?

L. You might think Miss Edgeworth meant that the right was to be done mainly because one was always rewarded for doing it.  It is an injustice to her to say that:  her heroines always do right simply for its own sake, as they should; and her examples of conduct and motive are wholly admirable.  But her representation of events is false and misleading.  Her good characters never are brought into the deadly trial of goodness,—­the doing right, and suffering for it, quite finally.  And that is life, as God arranges it.  “Taking up one’s cross” does not at all mean having ovations at dinner parties, and being put over everybody else’s head.

Dora.  But what does it mean then?  That is just what we couldn’t understand, when you were telling us about not sacrificing ourselves, yesterday.

L. My dear, it means simply that you are to go the road which you see to be the straight one; carrying whatever you find is given you to carry, as well and stoutly as you can; without making faces, or calling people to come and look at you.  Above all, you are neither to load, nor unload, yourself; nor cut your cross to your own liking.  Some people think it would be better for them to have it large; and many, that they could carry it much faster if it were small; and even those who like it largest are usually very particular about its being ornamental, and made of the best ebony.  But all that you have really to do is to keep your back as straight as you can; and not think about what is upon it—­above all, not to boast of what is upon it.  The real and essential meaning of “virtue” is in that straightness of back.  Yes; you may laugh, children, but it is.  You know I was to tell you about the words that began with V. Sibyl, what does “virtue” mean literally?

Sibyl.  Does it mean courage?