What duty is made of a single difficult resolve? The difficulty lies in the daily unflinching support of consequences that mar the blessed return of morning with the prospect of irritation to be suppressed or shame to be endured. And such consequences were being borne by these, as by many other heroic children of an unworthy father--with the prospect, at least to Mirah, of their stretching onward through the solid part of life.

The prospect of this duty to an unworthy father seemed to Mirah to stretch onward through her life.
