Mr. Hogarth's Will

by Catherine Helen Spence

"Speak for yourself, Frank," said Brandon; "but my wife spoils me, and everybody in the house. There is a sad want of vinegar in her composition. She cannot scold her servants—the mildest approach to it that she ever makes is by saying, 'Mr. Brandon does not like such a thing,' or that 'Mr. Brandon would be displeased if they do not attend to such another.' The idea of making a bugbear of me is very ingenious, but I fear not very efficacious, for I know they see through it. As for me, a penitent recollection of a conversation in an English railway carriage has stopped her mouth for ever, and she never gives me a hard word, however I may deserve it; and for the children, the less we say of them the better."

"But, Walter, I can keep my servants, and they really do very well; and the children are good enough, and so are you; so there is no need to scold."

"That is where the dangerous part of this subtle flattery lies; it is so perfectly sincere. But I suppose we get along pretty well, considering, as Mrs. Grant would say; and I really think her household would be more comfortable if she took a leaf out of my wife's book. Her servants will not stay three months with her, and she has three of the most spoiled, exacting children I ever saw—far worse than their cousins at Wiriwilta were in their worst days. The Phillipses had spirit, but the Grants have none, except perhaps the spirit of discontent. I think we might do worse, Peggy, than educate our girls to resemble their mothers."

"But," said Jane, "we must make some provision for them also, if we can. I suppose that I could have got on as well as you, Francis, if I had been a man."

"Yes, there is nothing I have done that you could not have done as well. I have as much perseverance as you, but not so much energy. It is likely you would have made a better figure in the world than I have done."

"But I could get nothing to do but to take a governess's situation; and wonderfully lucky I was to get it. Mary Forrester is a much better governess for Mr. Phillips's family than I was. Elsie could only maintain herself as a milliner or as a lady's maid; and yet Elsie, placed as a clerk or bookkeeper in a bank or merchant's office, would have filled the situation as satisfactorily as half the young men I know."

"Then you have not quite given up your notions of woman's rights?" said Mr. Dempster. "For my part, I think the best right a woman has is the right to a husband."

"That is a right she cannot assert for herself," said Jane, smiling. "One would think, to hear people talk on this subject, that the entreaties for work and independence come from those who in their youth disdained faithful lovers, and perversely and unnaturally refused to love, honour, and obey. I think, on the contrary, that the women of our century are only too easily won, and cannot be charged with any unnecessary cruelty to lovers. I do not think that you increase the number of happy marriages or lessen the number of mercenary unions by making the task for a single woman to maintain herself honestly and usefully such very uphill work."