“Well, then, let us go through them. To be a clergyman, what is required? To preach, and visit the sick, and feel for them, and understand what passes in the sorrowful hearts of the afflicted. Is that beyond our sex?”
“That last is far more beyond a man at most times; and oh, the discourses one has to sit out in church!”
“Portia made a very passable barrister, Miss Dodd.”
“Oh, did she?”
“Why, you know she did; and as for medicine, the great successes there are achieved by honeyed words, with a long word thrown in here and there. I've heard my own mamma say so. Now which shall I be?”
“I suppose you are making fun of me,” said Eve; “but there is many a true word spoken in jest. You could be a better, parson, lawyer or doctor than nine out of ten, but they won't let us. They know we could beat them into fits at anything but brute strength and wickedness, so they have shut all those doors in us poor girls' faces.”
“There; you see,” said Lucy archly, “but two lines are open to our honorable ambition, marriage and—water-colors. I think marriage the more honorable of the two; above all, it is the more fashionable. Can you blame me, then, if my ambition chooses the altar and not the easel?”
“So that is what you have been bringing me to.”
“You came of your own accord,” was the sly retort. “Let me offer you some luncheon.”
“No, thank you; I could not eat a morsel just now.”