The others laughed a little uncomfortably. Celia's face was red. Lottie's voice, rather deeper than most women's, and with a contralto note in it., was heard through the staccato sounds.
"Well, at least, Beck, she won't have to listen to her married friends saying, 'What's the matter with the men nowadays! What do they mean by letting a wonderful girl like you stay single, h'm?'"
They laughed at that. The atmosphere cleared a little. But Beck Schaefer's eyes were narrowed. "Now I'm looking for information. We're all friends here. We're all in the same boat—all except Celia, and she's climbed out of the boat and onto a raft. I want to know if it was worth the risk of changing. Here we all are—except Celia—failures. Any unmarried woman is a self-confessed failure."
A babel of protest. "How about Jane Addams!... Queen Elizabeth.... Joan of Arc!"
"Queen Elizabeth was a hussy. Jane Addams is a saint. Joan of Arc—well——"
Lottie Payson looked up from her knitting. "Joan of Arc had the courage to live her own life, which is more than any of us have. She called it listening to the voices, but I suppose what she really wanted was to get away from home. If she had weakened and said, 'Ma, I know I oughtn't to leave you. You need me to tend the geese,' her mother might have been happier, and Joan would have lived a lot longer, but the history of France would have been different."
Beck Schaefer frankly cast aside her knitting, hugged one knee with her jewel-decked hands, and waited for the laughter to subside. "You're all afraid of the truth—that's the truth. I'm willing to come through——"
"Goodness, Beck, where do you pick up that low talk!"
"I'm willing to come through if the rest of you are. We're all such a lot of liars. We all know Cele there had to wait ten years for her Orville because he had to support two selfish sisters and an invalid mother; and even after the mother died the two cats wouldn't go to live in two rooms as they should have, so that Celia and Orville could afford to be happy together. No! They wanted all the comforts he'd given them for years and so Celia——"
"Beck Schaefer I won't have——" the bride's face was scarlet. She bit her lip.