MRS. BROWN. Please do. I should love to have it and a photograph of your painting too.
MRS. TILSBURY. I will remember. Yes, my whole career was just beginning when I had to give it all up to follow Mildred around to Woman’s Suffrage meetings only because there is more money in it. What does the artistic woman want of a vote? Art has always been open to both sexes, and the Unseen Blushers include both men and women.
MRS. BROWN. It is very hard on you when you have so much talent to leave it all unused, but since you don’t want me to go to meetings, what assistance can I be to you?
MRS. TILSBURY. I know you were very unhappy in your married life, and I want you to tell Mildred all about it.
MRS. BROWN. (Indignantly.) Really, Josephine, there are some things that one doesn’t talk about to a child.
MRS. TILSBURY. Mildred is eighteen, and the men are after her already. You have no idea what men will do to get a little money.
MRS. BROWN. I cannot lay bare the secrets of my married life. Besides, I don’t know but I might marry again. My experience was in some ways unfortunate to be sure, but one swallow doesn’t make a summer, nor one man matrimony.
MRS. TILSBURY. One man doesn’t make matrimony! To hear you, Imogene, one would think you were—not a Mormon but the other thing; what is it they call it?—oh, yes, I remember, a polyanthus.
MRS. BROWN. I did not mean more than one husband at a time. I meant that if a woman is unfortunate in her first choice and is left a widow, she might from her increased experience be able to select a second husband better. It is very lonesome to be a widow. It is all very well in the daytime when the men are down-town but the evenings are so long. There are so many jokes about widows that a man is afraid to be left alone with one. If I should talk a lot against marriage and then suddenly marry again, my inconsistency would do more harm to your cause than if I should keep silence in the first place.
MRS. TILSBURY. I don’t know about that. I used to have a beau when I was a girl who always kept repeating, “Inconsistency, thy name is woman.” He said it so often that I have never been able to forget it since.