Joan was both astonished and amused. She could not fit the picture into her conception of the Carmichael elegance. "I shouldn't bother with a groom at all," she murmured.
"Of course you wouldn't! But you see I've got old-fashioned parents who can't imagine a young girl being able to go about alone in safety. They suspect a bandit of lurking behind every bush for the purpose of carrying off their precious Emily. So far no bandit has had the courage to attempt it!" she sighed. "Do you know, what I envy you most is your independence?"
"My independence? But that's just what I wish I had!" cried Joan, and presently found herself confiding in this stranger something that she had hitherto kept to herself—her determination to earn her own living.
The other girl listened with sympathy, too well-bred to ask questions, but quick to understand.
"It doesn't seem fair," she sighed. "We girls haven't a chance at all. If you were a boy you would have been prepared in some way, of course. In our family, for instance, my brother Johnny, who isn't half as intelligent as I am (and that's not bragging, either), was put most unwillingly through college, and given three extra years at law, and sent around the world—all to prepare him for a career of horse-racing and wild oats generally. He's a dear, you know, but he must have his little wild oats.... And what did I get? Two years of an Eastern finishing school, where I learned to dress better than we can afford, to sing and play a little, and to speak French with a fair accent! I wasn't even prepared for—the thing that's expected of us," she added, flushing. "I've never cooked a meal nor made a bed in my life, Mother proceeding on the theory that if you learn how to do such things you'll have to do them—No fear! No sensible, practical, poor young man would ever have the courage to ask such a useless thing as me to share his humble lot!"
Joan looked at her curiously. She was a tall, rather statuesque type, as so many Kentucky women are; not beautiful, but with a splendid figure, a gallant poise of the head, an air of race and elegance that associated oddly with the idea of cooking and bedmaking.
"You'll simply have to choose the sort of husband that hasn't a humble lot," Joan suggested.
"Choose?" the other shrugged. "Where am I to find him? Not in this part of the world, evidently. You see I've been out several years, my dear. And Mother's far too well-bred to take me about husband hunting, even if she were able to afford it—No, no, I shall simply subside gracefully into old maidhood, as so many of us do nowadays. Haven't you noticed the numbers of old maids about here—charming, cultivated women who have waited too long for a possible partner to come and discover them? Filling their lives with Bridge and charity and committee work! Useful, I suppose, and contented enough, but—It isn't what one dreams of! Mere pis aller.... And I don't see how the ballot's going to help, do you?"
"Except by changing the fashion in female education," mused Joan. "Meanwhile we've just got to help ourselves. Pull ourselves up by our own boot-straps."
"And we haven't even got the boot-straps!" laughed the other, ruefully....