“Women purify the atmosphere wherever they go,” said the lady.
“Many women do,” returned Julius; “but will they retain that power universally if they succeed in obtaining a position where there will be less consideration for them, and they must be exposed to a certain hardening and roughening process?”
“If so,” exclaimed Mrs. Tallboys, “if men are so base, we would soon assert ourselves. We are no frail morning glories for you to guard and worship with restraint, lest forsooth your natural breath should wither us away.”
As she spoke the door opened, and, with a strong reek of tobacco, in came the two other gentlemen. “Well, Rector, have you given in?” asked the Captain. “Is Lady Rosamond to mount the pulpit henceforth?”
“Ah! wouldn’t I preach you a sermon,” returned Rosamond.
“To resume,” said Mrs. Tallboys, sitting very upright. “You still go on the old assumption that woman was made for you. It is all the same story: one man says she is for his pleasure, another for his servant, and you, for—for his refinement. You would all have us adjectives. Now I defy you to prove that woman is not a substantive, created for herself.”
“If you said ‘growed,’ Mrs. Tallboys, it would be more consistent,” said Jenny. “Her creation and her purpose in the world stand upon precisely the same authority.”
“I wonder at you, Miss Bowater,” said Mrs. Tallboys. “I cannot understand a woman trying to depreciate her sex.”
“No,” thrust in Gussie Moy; “I want to know why a woman can’t go about without a dowager waddling after her” (“Thank you,” breathed Lady Tyrrell into Herbert’s ear), “nor go to a club.”
“There was such a club proposed in London,” said Captain Duncombe, “and do you know, Gussie, the name of it?”