"Ah! You wait a little!" she said.

"You're young now.
You've got all your vitality still in your veins.

Wait till this pitiless country begins to get hold of you! Wait till you begin to bear children, and all your strength is drained out of you, and you still have to keep on at the same grinding drudgery till you're ready to drop, and your husband comes in and laughs at you and tells you to buck up, when you haven't an ounce of energy left in you! See how you like the prison-house then! All your young freshness gone and nothing left--nothing left!" She spoke with such force that Sylvia felt actually shocked.

Yet still with that instinctive tact of hers, she sought to smooth the troubled waters.

"Oh, have you children ?" she said.