"You found it hard work at first?
Sometimes, when I hear stories like yours, Miss Grant, when I pass young girls, thin, white-faced, poorly-clothed, going to their work, with the look of old men on their faces--I mean old men, not women, mind!--I ask myself whether there is not some special place, with a special kind of punishment, appointed for selfish fathers, who have consigned their daughters to life-long toil and misery.

I beg your pardon!" "No, I don't think my father was selfish," said Celia, more to herself than to her listener.

"Not consciously so; he was sanguine, too sanguine; he lived in the moment----" "I know," said Mr.Clendon.

"Some men are born like that, and can't help themselves.

Well, what did you do ?" "Oh, it was what I tried to do," said Celia, with a laugh.