"I protest, Miss Eva," said I, astonished at the eagerness of her manner. "I'm sure I don't know what I have said to give that impression."
"Oh, I dare say not. You have only used the good stock phrases and said the usual things. You reformers and moralists, and all that have got a way of setting us girls down as sinners as a matter of course, so that you never think when you do it. The 'Dolls of fashion,' the 'Butterflies,' &c., &c., are used to point the moral and adorn the tale. The girl of the period is the scapegoat for all the naughty things going. Now, I say the girl of the period isn't a particle worse than the boy of the period; and I think reformers had better turn their attention to him."
"But I don't remember," said I, astonished and confused at the sudden vivacity of this attack, "that I said anything."
"Oh, yes, but I do. You see it's the party that's hit that knows when a blow is struck. You see, Mr. Henderson, it isn't merely you, but everybody, from the London Spectator down, when they get on their preaching-caps, and come forth to right the wrongs of society, begin about us—our dressiness, our expensiveness, our idleness, our extravagance, our heartlessness. The men, poor, dear creatures, are led astray and ruined by us. It's the old story of Adam: 'The woman beguiled me.'"
"You see," said Ida, laughing, "Eva's conscience troubles her; that's why she's so sensitive."
"Well, that's the truth," said Eva. "I'm in the world, and Ida has gone out of it; and so she can sit by, all serene, when hits are made at us, and say, 'I told you so.' But, you see, I am in, and am all the while sure that about half what they say of us is true, and that makes me sensitive when they say too much. But, I insist upon it, it isn't all true; and if it is, it isn't our fault. We are in the world just as we are in a railroad-car, and we can't help its carrying us on, even if we don't like the places it takes us through."
"Unless you get out of it," said Ida.
"Yes, but it takes courage to get out alone, at some desolate way station, and set up your tent, and make your way, and have everybody in the cars screaming remonstrances or laughing at you. Ida has the courage to do it, but I haven't. I don't believe in myself enough to do it, so I stay in the car, and wish I didn't, and wish we were all going a better way than we do."
"No," said Ida; "women are brought up in a way to smother all the life out of them. All literature from the earliest ages teaches them that it is graceful to be pretty and helpless; they aspire to be superficial and showy. They are directed to look on themselves as flowers—