"I've thought that, sometimes—and then my light goes out again. I started a kind of library when I first went up, but all that the girls and women seem to care about—the men never read at all—are love stories, the sillier the better. Anything else is something going on away off in another world. It does not concern them and never will. Why, some of my people had, until recently, never even heard of suffrage or sex hygiene or minimum wages, and they don't care or understand when I try to explain. They accept their lives like the weather. To the men the crops are good or bad, and the women have good husbands or bad husbands and that's all. The boys and girls marry young and the babies begin coming right away. For a few years the children seem to be eager and interested and then, somehow, it leaks away. I've only been teaching two years but I can see it, as if I had been there a hundred. And I want to do something. I want to get those who come to me started right. Perhaps, even with little children of six or seven, if some of us could get the seed planted——"
Pat broke off, as if the physical strength for explanation had broken under the terrific weight of the indifference with which she was struggling. Jean looked at her and a coldness settled about her own heart. It was so real to Pat and so worth while, something into which she could pour the whole warmth of herself. Jean pictured the last woman whom she had interviewed, with a scheme for saving stray dogs; and Thompson's long harangue with the Art Department about the illustrations.
"You're right, absolutely right," Dr. Mary went on; "it is the century of the child. There's our biggest chance, especially for you younger women, and so few see it. But there's hope. After all, we are beginning to creep in this field. In the next ten years, I hope, we'll at least get on our knees. Maybe in twenty we'll be able to walk."
"It's so maddeningly slow."
"It's like creeping paralysis, only going the other way. We are not getting deader, but more alive, at the same speed. But if we hang on to our patience we'll get something done."
Pat leaned forward. "I wish you would speak at the next state institute. Maybe a few of us would get up on our knees a little sooner."
Dr. Mary laid her hand over Pat's. "Thank you. There's nothing that makes me feel so unworthy and humble and grateful as meaning something to other women. I love 'em, every one of them, the young, brave, fearless women. Society's been asleep for ages, but it's waking up. It needs us, in other ways than it thought it did, and we'll be there with the goods."
Jean drew deeper into her chair. At the motion Dr. Mary turned.
"I'm not even going to apologize, Mrs. Herrick, for absorbing all the conversation. You know what I am when I get started."
She grinned at Pat. "When Mrs. Herrick came to interview me, she didn't get a chance to say a thing. I talked all the time."