Frank Sunderline, with a grave look, nodded his head thoughtfully, twice.
"If anything happens to Mr. Ingraham, won't it be strange that I should have asked her what I did, just that minute?"
"What? O, yes!"
It had fairly been jostled out of the young man's mind. They walked on silently again. But Marion could not give it up.
"I don't doubt she would be a baker; carry on the whole concern,—if there was money. She keeps all her father's accounts, now."
"Does she?"
"She wouldn't have had the chance if there had been a boy. That's what I say isn't fair."
"I think you are mistaken. You can't change the way of the world. There isn't anything to hinder a woman's doing work like that,—even going on with it, as you say,—when it is set for her by special circumstances. It's natural, and a duty; and the world will treat her well and think the more of her. Things are so that it is getting easier every day for it to be done. The facilities of the times can't help serving women as much as men. But people won't generally bring up their daughters to the work or the prospects that they do their sons, simply because they can't depend upon them in the same way afterwards. If a girl marries,—and she ought to if she can right,"—
"And what if she has to, if she can, wrong?"
"Then she interferes with Providence again. She hasn't patience. She takes what wasn't meant for her, and she misses what was; whether it's work, or—somebody to work for her."