it; she can keep accounts accurately, she is her mother’s housekeeper.  Some day she will be the mother of a family; by managing her father’s house she is preparing to manage her own; she can take the place of any of the servants and she is always ready to do so.  You cannot give orders unless you can do the work yourself; that is why her mother sets her to do it.  Sophy does not think of that; her first duty is to be a good daughter, and that is all she thinks about for the present.  Her one idea is to help her mother and relieve her of some of her anxieties.  However, she does not like them all equally well.  For instance, she likes dainty food, but she does not like cooking; the details of cookery offend her, and things are never clean enough for her.  She is extremely sensitive in this respect and carries her sensitiveness to a fault; she would let the whole dinner boil over into the fire rather than soil her cuffs.  She has always disliked inspecting the kitchen-garden for the same reason.  The soil is dirty, and as soon as she sees the manure heap she fancies there is a disagreeable smell.

This defect is the result of her mother’s teaching.  According to her, cleanliness is one of the most necessary of a woman’s duties, a special duty, of the highest importance and a duty imposed by nature.  Nothing could be more revolting than a dirty woman, and a husband who tires of her is not to blame.  She insisted so strongly on this duty when Sophy was little, she required such absolute cleanliness in her person, clothing, room, work, and toilet, that use has become habit, till it absorbs one half of her time and controls the other; so that she thinks less of how to do a thing than of how to do it without getting dirty.

Yet this has not degenerated into mere affectation and softness; there is none of the over refinement of luxury.  Nothing but clean water enters her room; she knows no perfumes but the scent of flowers, and her husband will never find anything sweeter than her breath.  In conclusion, the attention she pays to the outside does not blind her to the fact that time and strength are meant for greater tasks; either she does not know or she despises that exaggerated cleanliness of body which degrades the soul.  Sophy is more than clean, she is pure.

I said that Sophy was fond of good things.  She was so by nature; but she became temperate by habit and now she is temperate by virtue.  Little girls are not to be controlled, as little boys are, to some extent, through their greediness.  This tendency may have ill effects on women and it is too dangerous to be left unchecked.  When Sophy was little, she did not always return empty handed if she was sent to her mother’s cupboard, and she was not quite to be trusted with sweets and sugar-almonds.  Her mother caught her, took them from her, punished her, and made her go without her dinner.  At last she managed to persuade her that sweets were bad for the teeth, and that over-eating spoiled the figure.