"There is no reason why any woman should begin. Your great-grandmama did not."
"But my great-grandmama couldn't tell when her tooth ached, and you can, I've heard you do it. It was very disrespectful of you, dear Auntie."
"If you cannot be serious, Sally, I refuse to discuss the subject."
"But how can anybody be serious, Aunt Mitty, about a person who didn't know when her own tooth ached?"
"Dear sister," remarked Miss Matoaca, in a voice of gentle obstinacy, "I do not wish to be the cause of a disagreement between Sally and yourself. Any question that was not one of principle I should gladly give up. I know you are not much of a reader, but if you would only glance at an article in the last Fortnightly Review on the Emancipation of Women—"
"I should have thought, sister Matoaca, that Dr. Peterson's last sermon in St. Paul's on the feminine sphere would have been a far safer guide for you. His text, Mr. Starr," she added, turning to me, "was, 'She looketh well to the ways of her household.'"
"At least you can't accuse Aunt Matoaca of neglecting the ways of her household," said Sally, merrily, "even the General rises up after dinner and praises her mince pies. Do you like mince pies, Ben?"
I replied that I was sure that I should like Miss Matoaca's, for I had heard them lauded by General Bolingbroke; at which the poor lady blushed until her cheeks looked like withered rose leaves. She was one of those unhappy women, I had learned during breakfast, who suffered from a greater mental activity than was usually allotted to the females of their generation. Behind that long and narrow face, with its pencilled eyebrows, its fine, straight nose, and restlessly shining eyes, what battles of conviction against tradition must have waged. Was the final triumph of intellect due, in reality, to the accident of an unhappy love? Had the General's frailties driven this shy little lady, with her devotion to law and order, and her excellent mince pies, into a martyr for the rights of sex?
"I am told that Mrs. Clay prides herself upon her pies," she remarked. "I have never eaten them, but Dr. Theophilus tells me that he prefers mine because I use less suet."
"I am sure nobody's could compare with yours, sister Matoaca," observed Miss Mitty in an affable tone, "and I happen to know that Mrs. Clay resorts to Mrs. Camberwell's cook-book. We prefer Mrs. Randolph's," she added, turning to me.