“Not quite; but I think it a very good thing that women nowadays can find occupations and professions for themselves.”
“It’s not fair to men, it’s really not,” answered Webster, smiling also. “Just take my profession, for instance, which I fully expect will be invaded by the female element in no time. Now I ask you what chance has a judge to be just, to say nothing of the susceptible bosoms of the twelve good men in the jury box, when confronted with a lovely creature in silk pleading the cause of some ruffian? She’d talk them all over. She’d paint the blackest crimes white, and it would certainly come to this, that the handsomest female barristers would get all the briefs, because it would be only too well known that no man could resist them.”
“But I thought,” said May, who was very much amused, “that before barristers wear silk that they are not quite so young as they once were? Suppose, then, an elderly female barrister, with her brow wrinkled with thought, and her sallow cheeks lined with study, were to confront the jury, do you think that she would have any more effect than a man?”
Webster laughed.
“You draw an appalling picture,” he said; “for my part I can only answer I don’t think she would.”
“Yet you see she would be earning her living; and what can poor women do?”
“They should marry, and men should work for them.”
“But they can’t all marry; hundreds of things may prevent them marrying. I often wish I had been brought up to a profession.”
“Please turn your eyes away from mine; I do not wish to be cut out.”