“With me it is quite different,” said Madame hastily.
“That is what everybody says to me whenever I want to do what other people find it right to do. I hate being treated like a baby.”
“You are very young and very pretty, child, and that makes it all the more necessary for your friends to guard you against dangers which you don’t perceive as clearly as they do.”
“I hate being young and—well—pretty, if it’s always going to make me be treated like that,” said Olive angrily.
“Like what?”
“Like a naughty child. That’s what Ezra does, and he goes to you to ask what he should do to me, you know he does.” She was beginning to cry, just like a naughty child.
Madame smiled contemptuously as she glanced at her companion. “What could have possessed that quiet reserved Ezra to marry such a feather-headed vain little puss?” she thought bitterly.
Olive dried her eyes angrily, she saw the contempt expressed by Madame’s curling lips, and her pride was thoroughly aroused.
“I want to know why things are different as soon as they apply to me?” she asked with doubtful grammar but unmistakable import. “It isn’t this once only, but it is always so. Personal liberty is the corner-stone of Perfection City, that is what you are here for, to enjoy liberty and protest against things. Mary Winkle won’t take her husband’s name, and dresses like a fright, and nobody minds. She’s free. But as soon as I try a little flight of my own, that doesn’t hurt anybody, I’m to be popped into a cage, and you and Ezra come and shut the door on me. I met this man by chance and liked talking to him. He is well-mannered and well educated, and likes the same books as I do, and has travelled and could tell me heaps and heaps of interesting things. He wasn’t forever talking in the same little muddling circle, and wasn’t always full of himself. He tried to interest me. You are an educated woman, Madame, and you know as well as I do that, except for you and Ezra, there is not an educated person in Perfection City, nor one who has the same tastes as I have. Mr. Cotterell used to come and talk to me, and I liked it; then Ezra gets very angry, says he is a bad man, and forbids my seeing him. He forbids me, mind you. Not a bit the sort of language you would expect in Perfection City, but I believe in wifely obedience and I obeyed him. I told Mr. Cotterell he must not come to see me any more, and he won’t do so. He always showed the best spirit in everything he said, and I won’t believe he is so very wicked just on mere report. We once had a horse-thief and murderer to stay to supper, and we did not inquire into his character before we asked him to stop and rest and feed his horse. Mr. Cotterell said my influence might help him to be a better man, and perhaps it might. At all events, I want to know why I wasn’t to try to influence him, and I want to know why Perfection City ideas, when they make for freedom, are not applicable to me, but have to be all turned upside down when I come into play? Can you, Madame, answer me that?”
Madame was considerably dumbfoundered by this attack delivered so unexpectedly and so very straight from the shoulder. She hastily recast her idea that Olive was a silly little fool, and most unaccountably found herself anxiously seeking about for means of defence.