“Hush, child,—hush! You don’t know what you’re talking about!” Jeannette broke in, suddenly stirred to speech. “I threw away my life, talking just that kind of nonsense. To learn to earn her own living is a dangerous thing for a young girl.”
“Why, how do you mean, Aunt Jan?”
“Its effect is poison; it’s like a drug, a disease! I’ve paid bitterly for my financial independence. I sacrificed everything that was precious to me because I wanted to be self-supporting. Etta dear, life is a hard game for women at best, but waiting within the shelter of her own home for the man she’ll some day come to love and who will love her is the best and wisest course for a girl to follow.”
“But I hate the kind of life I’m living! There’s nothing ahead of me but marriage, unless I go to work! You wouldn’t want me to marry just because I was bored at home,—and I’ve known lots of girls to do that! I never meet any attractive men,—only High School kids and rah-rah boys out of college. Wouldn’t I have a much better chance to meet a finer class of young men around business offices,—I mean serious-minded, ambitious young men? It seems to me I’d have much more opportunity to meet a man I’d admire, and who might want me to marry him if I went to work than I ever will waiting stupidly at home.”
“It doesn’t make any difference where you meet him, whether it is in business or at a High School dance,” Jeannette answered. “He’s bound to find you, and you him.... I hate to see you go to work. You pay a fearful penalty in doing so. It makes you regard marriage lightly, and prejudices you against having children——”
“Oh, I shall want children!” exclaimed Etta, promptly. She proceeded to outline just what were her requirements in a husband, and to give her views on the subject of having children. Her aunt was somewhat disconcerted to discover that she had these matters, as far as they concerned herself, entirely settled in her own mind. “Oh, yes, indeed,” Etta repeated, “I shall want children. Perhaps not such a lot of them as Moth’ and Dad have. They would have had a much easier time of it, if they’d had only one or two. Instead of always being poor and having to struggle, they could have lived in considerable comfort, and now there would be no question about their being able to send me to Bryn Mawr or Vassar. I think two children are enough for any couple. Now, my idea, Aunt Janny,——”
“Oh, for Heaven’s sakes, Etta!” Jeannette interrupted with impatience; “you don’t know what you’re talking about! What does your education or Ralph’s education amount to in comparison with the lives of Frank, Nettie, and Baby Roy? You’ll have a great deal more worth-while education pounded into you by having brothers and sisters and by having to help your mother take care of them, than you would ever get at Bryn Mawr. More than that, just living in the same house with them, being brought up with them and learning to deny yourself, now and then, for their sake has taught you unselfishness, forbearance that will make you a far better wife and mother than ten years’ of college education! ... Your father and mother with you children about them, with the hard problems you present, with the ever-pressing question of ways and means before them, with the solving of these problems,—for there is always a solution,—are among the most enviable people in the world. There was a time when I used to feel sorry for your mother, but now I look at her with only admiration and jealousy. You think of her as poor! Well, I think of her as rich! And I attribute much of the happiness she has had out of life to the fact that she never went into business.... Stay out of it, Etta my dear, whatever you do! It’s an unnatural environment for a girl, and in it her mind and soul as surely become contaminated as if she deliberately went to live in a smallpox camp.... Look at me, my dear! I’ve given twenty years of my life to business and what have I to show for it? Nothing but a very lonely and selfish old age!”
“Oh, Aunt Jan!” cried the girl, shocked into protesting. “How can you say such things! Why I think you’re one of the handsomest, happiest, most enviable, smartest-dressed women in the world!”
Jeannette laughed.
“Well, I didn’t mean to deliver a ‘curtain’ lecture! I just hated the thought of your following in my footsteps. It makes me actually shudder even to think of it. But I didn’t mean to get started the way I did——