She shrugged her shoulders. 'It's what they all do,' she said, 'all the retired. I've seen it a hundred times in Berlin. They're old, and they never can start anything fresh.'
'We won't be like that when we're old, will we?' I said, gazing at her wide-eyed, struck as by a vision.
She gazed back into my eyes, misgiving creeping, into hers. 'Sleep, and eat, and read the paper?' she murmured.
'Sleep, and eat, and read the paper?' I echoed.
And we stared at each other in silence, and the far-away dim years seemed to catch up what we had said, and mournfully droned back, 'Sleep, and eat, and read the paper....'
But what is to be done with girls of good family who do not marry, and have no money? They can't go governessing, and indeed it is a dreary trade. Vicki has learned nothing except a little cooking and other domestic drudgery, only of use if you have a house to drudge in and a husband to drudge for; of those pursuits that bring in money and make you independent and cause you to flourish and keep green and lusty she knows nothing. If I had a daughter I would bring her up with an eye fixed entirely on a husbandless future. She should be taught some trade as carefully as any boy. Her head should be filled with as much learning as it would conveniently hold side by side with a proper interest in ribbons. I would spend my days impressing her with the gloriousness of independence, of having her time entirely at her own disposal, her life free and clear, the world open before her, as open as it was to Adam and Eve when they turned their backs once and for all on the cloying sweetness of Paradise, and far more interesting that it was to them, for it would be full of inhabitants eager to give her the hearty welcome always awaiting those rare persons, the cheery and the brave.
'Oh,' sighed Vicki, when with great eloquence and considerable elaboration I unfolded these views, 'how beautiful!'
Papa was nearer the open window under which we were sitting than I had thought, for he suddenly popped out his head. 'It is a merciful thing, Rose-Marie,' he said, 'that you have no daughter.'
We both jumped.
'She would be a most dreary young female,' he went on, smiling down as from a pulpit on our heads, and wiping his spectacles. 'Offspring continually goaded and galvanized by a parent, hammered upon, chiselled, beaten out flat—'