ONLY A FRESHER.
It was rather hard work to persuade the old Master of St. Benedict's that Lucy ought to go to Newnham. He belonged to the old school—he was almost the last left of that school—that did not believe very much in women. He believed in a girl learning to sew, and to spell, and play a little air on the piano—he was very fond of 'Annie Laurie,' he could listen to it by the hour; he went so far, indeed, as the three R's in a woman's education—and he stopped there.
He had no sympathy whatever in the movement for the higher education of Women—spelt with a big W. He had voted consistently all his life against women being admitted to any of the privileges of the University, against their being allowed to take degrees; he had even voted against their being 'placed.' He regarded every concession made to the weaker sex as a step towards that dreadful time when a female Vice-Chancellor will confer degrees in the Senate House, and a lady D.D. will occupy the University pulpit.
With these views, and with his prejudices growing stronger rather than weaker with the years, it was no wonder that Mary Rae had great difficulty in reconciling the Master to the idea of Lucy becoming a student of Newnham.
He had to look at the question all round, from every point of view, and he had to talk it over a great many times. Sometimes he talked it over with himself after dinner, when he woke up from his nap, or didn't quite wake up; and sometimes he talked it over with his nieces.
'I don't think your father would approve of it, my dear,' he said one day when he was talking 'it' over with Lucy. 'He was a plain man, he hadn't the advantages of education that I had; but he had what served him just as well, he had common-sense. He knew what was wanted in a woman. A woman, he used to say, ought to be able to milk, and make butter, and bring up a family. Dick's wife could do all these, and her poultry was noted in all the country round.'
Lucy sighed. She had no ambition to make butter and bring up a family, and she had a distinct aversion to poultry. She hated cocks and hens and broods of yellow downy chickens. She remembered how they used always to be getting into the Vicarage garden and digging up her flower-seeds.
'I am afraid I couldn't get my living by making butter, uncle,' she said meekly, 'or milking cows.'
She never could remember to say 'Master,' like everybody else.