"Oh! he's in it," said her father, referring to my own modest financial share, and adding, if I know anything about him, "I never cared for the man, as you are probably aware."
He stamped up and down the room for a while and then began again.
"I'm not narrow-minded, thank God!" he declared. "Whatever else I may be, I'm not narrow-minded; but I'm bound to say I don't think it's quite fair to me to open an office of this sort. If you were taking up the secretaryship of a ladies' golf club I shouldn't mind. I'm all for women playing golf, so long as they have links of their own. Or a secretaryship to an M.P., say, as long as it wasn't a damned Labour member. But an office with a brass plate and your name—my name—on it, no! I draw the line there."
"It won't have our name," said Ben. "It's to be called 'The Beck and Call.'"
"Oh, is it?" he cried. "Is it? I like that! Colonel Staveley's daughter advertising herself at anyone's beck and call. A nice pill for an old soldier to swallow, a nice thing to explain away to one's friends."
Ben was silent for a while. Then, "I think you're taking it too seriously," she said. "Many changes have come about since you were young. The world has given up a lot of its sillinesses, and one of them is the prejudice against people going into business. I am convinced that no girl of twenty-two ought to be just a drone."
"I can't think why you never married," said the Colonel, peevishly.
"I suppose because it takes two to make a marriage," said Ben.
"You must have played your cards devilish badly," her father retorted. "There's Alicia she's married, even though her husband is dead. And Merrill's married. And most of your cousins are married. I can't understand what you've been doing."
"Some girls must be single," said Ben. "Why, there are millions more women than men in this country alone. I read the figures only the other day."