This is not the place to discuss the ethics of this universal custom. Women, with reckless waste have always flung themselves into the domestic gulf. They choose to throw away their own happiness in order to make others happy, forgetting too often that _they who injure themselves shall not be counted innocent_.
Home is not ruined in a day, and it is wonderful what rack and strain and tugging the marriage tie will bear ere it snaps asunder. For three years and a half after the birth of the child, Theodora was subjected to an unwearying hostility, always finding fresh reasons for complaint and injustice. And it was a cruel symptom of this intentional malice, that it took as its usual vehicle, little David. He could do nothing right. Baby as he was, his grandmother found him to be a child of many sinful proclivities. She was never weary of pointing out his faults. "He looked so vulgarly English, he had no Scotch burr in his speech; he walked wrong, he made her peaceful home a Bedlam of crying and shouting. He was naturally rude, he would scarcely answer his aunts if they spoke to him; and if she herself but came near him, he ran away and hid himself in his mother's arms. He was also shockingly fond of low company. He could not be coaxed into her room, but was never out of the kitchen; and one day she had found him sitting on the pastry table, watching McNab make the tarts." At this charge Robert smiled and asked:
"Why does not Ducie keep him out of the kitchen? She ought to do so."
"She likes to be there herself. I think it would be well to send her back to Kendal at once. There is no necessity for a nurse now, and the boy ought to be learning how to care for himself--you did so before you were his age. And really, Robert, keeping a maid for Dora is a most unnecessary expense; it also makes a great deal of trouble among the house-servants. The girl is always quarrelling with them about her mistress, and pitying them about their mistress. I fancy Dora makes an equal of her."
"That is not Dora's way, mother. And the girl is not only a nurse, she attends to our rooms also."
"Could she do it the first thing in the morning?"
"Do you think Dora's rooms ought to be attended to before mine?"