`Just as though I should seek the right to be a wet nurse, and feel injured because women are paid for the work, while no one will take me,' said the old Prince.

Turovtsin exploded in a loud roar of laughter, and Sergei Ivanovich regretted that he had not made this comparison. Even Alexei Alexandrovich smiled.

`Yes, but a man can't nurse a baby,' said Pestsov, `while a woman...'

`No, there was an Englishman who did suckle his baby on board ship,' said the old Prince, feeling this freedom in conversation permissible before his own daughters.

`There are as many such Englishmen as there would be women officials,' said Sergei Ivanovich.

`Yes, but what is a girl to do who has no family?' put in Stepan Arkadyevich, thinking of Masha Chibisova, whom he had had in his mind all along, in sympathizing with Pestsov and supporting him.

`If the story of such a girl were thoroughly sifted, you would find she had abandoned a family - her own or a sister's, where she might have found a woman's duties,' Darya Alexandrovna broke in unexpectedly, in a tone of exasperation, probably suspecting what sort of girl Stepan Arkadyevich had in mind.

`But we take our stand on principle, on the ideal,' replied Pestsov in his sonorous bass. `Woman desires to have the right to be independent, educated. She is oppressed, humiliated by the consciousness of her disabilities.'

`And I'm oppressed and humiliated that they won't engage me at the Foundling Asylum,' the old Prince said again, to the huge delight of Turovtsin, who in his mirth dropped his asparagus with the thick end in the sauce.