“And yet many cannot read or write, and spend their days playing childish games, dressing dolls, quarrelling, or eating sweets; their minds are a blank.”
“Better so than be full of wickedness.”
“And yet you read French novels yourself; you have had a good education; you have seen the world. A woman is to be shut up between four walls, spending her days like some wound-up mechanical toy. Is she not as much a human being as you are?”
“No; she is an inferior,” was his astounding statement.
“Thank you,” I replied, with an arctic bow.
“But she is well watched and cared for,” he calmly proceeded, “and is very happy in her home, and has enormous influence.”
“And yet she may not sit in her husband’s presence; and when he enters a room, must stand with her face to the wall!”
“That is seldom done now; these customs are going out of fashion.”
“Yes, like the bow-string and the sack!” I retorted, with a spice of temper.
At this moment some one came and offered to take me down to supper, and I was not sorry to leave Mr. Raymond; there was an odd glitter in his eyes, and a repressed tone in his speech, that I did not altogether relish. He had not been pleased with my thrust about the sack and bow-string, and for my part I had not fancied being so plainly informed that I was “an old woman.” We were never such good friends after that night, and I think he had an insane idea that I—I, strait-laced Louisa Paulet—encouraged those two light-hearted officers in their fluttering round his wife!