"I'm not going to take either of 'em in a hurry," she went on. "I'd not be leaving you in the lurch with the baby, Miss Ruth. I'd like to have Ran, but I don't know what he's got. He'd make me stand round awful, they say, and Dennis'd be under my thumb like a crumb of butter. I mistrust I'd be more contented with Ranny. It'd be more stirred up like; but I'd have some natural fear of him, and that's pleasant for a woman."
I had never seen Rosa in this astonishing mood before, and so much worldly wisdom was bewildering. Such generalizations on the relation of the sexes took away my breath. I was forced to be silent, for there was evidently no chance of my holding my own in a conversation of this sort. It is strange how boldly and bluntly this uneducated girl has thought out her relations with her lovers. She recognizes entirely that Dennis, who is her slave, will treat her better than Ran, who will be her master; yet she "mistrusts she will be more contented with Ranny." The moral seems to be that a woman is happier to be abused by the man she loves than to be served by the man who loves her. That can only be crude instinct, the relics of savagery. In civilized woman, I am sure, when respect goes love must go also.
No; that isn't true! Women keep on loving men when they know them to be unworthy. Perhaps this applies especially to good wives. A good woman is bound to love her husband just as long as she can in any way compass it, and to deceive herself about him to the latest possible instant. I wonder what I should do? I wonder—Well, George has shown that he is not what I thought him, and do I care for him less? He only showed, however, that he did not care for me as much as I thought, and of course that does not necessarily prove him unworthy. And yet—
What is the use of all this? What do I know about it anyway? I will go to bed.
May 12. It is amusing to see how jealous Hannah and Rosa are of baby's attention. Thomasine can as yet hardly be supposed to distinguish one human being from another, and very likely has not drawn very accurate comparisons between any of us and the furniture; but Rosa insists that baby knows her, and is far more fond of her than of Hannah, while of course Hannah indignantly sniffs at an idea so preposterous.
"She really laughed at me this morning when I was giving her her bath," Rosa assured me to-day. "She knows me the minute I come into the nursery."
It is beautiful to see how the sweetness and helplessness of the little thing have so appealed to the girls that prejudices are forgotten. When I brought Thomasine home I feared that I might have trouble. They scorned the child of that Brownrig girl, and they both showed the fierce contempt which good girls of their class feel for one who disgraces herself. All this is utterly forgotten. The charm of baby has so enslaved them that if an outsider ventured to show the feelings they themselves had at first, they would be full of wrath and indignation. The maternal instinct is after all the strongest thing in most women. Rosa considers her matrimonial chances in a bargain-and-sale fashion which takes my breath, but she will be perfectly fierce in her fondness for her children. Hannah is a born old maid, but she cannot help mothering every baby who comes within her reach, and for Thomasine she brings out all the sweetness of her nature.
May 15. I have been through a whirlwind, but now I am calm, and can think of things quietly. It is late, but the fire has not burned down, and I could not sleep, so Peter and I may as well stay where we are a while longer.
I was reading this afternoon, when suddenly Kathie rushed into the room out of breath with running, her face smooched and wet with tears, and her hair in confusion.
"Why, Kathie," I asked, "what is the matter?"