Catherine, eager to launch forth upon her hobby to her new friend, glowed with enthusiasm as she talked.
"I have come from a race, Margaret, that for generations have been teachers, college professors, ministers, public school superintendents—the pedagogue seems to be born in every one of us. And it's in me strong. So I am going to devote my life to the establishing of a school for girls in which all the training shall converge to one ideal—that of service—as over against that of the usual finishing school, whatever that ideal is! And, Margaret, here's my point: I'm going to make my school fashionable, a formidable rival of those futile, idiotic institutions in which girls from the country are taught how they must enter a drawing-room or step into an automobile, and are quite incidentally instructed, cautiously and delicately, in every 'branch' in the whole category of learning, so that they may be able to 'converse' on any subject whatever without betraying the awful depths of their ignorance!—the vast expanse of their shallowness. My school shall teach girls that life is meant for earnest work, because work means physical and spiritual health and happiness. My school shall make girls ashamed to admit they've ever been to the other sort of 'finishing' school. It's going to put that sort of school out of business, Margaret! I tell you, the coming woman is going to be the efficient woman. The unqualified of our sex will take a back seat, just as unqualified men do."
"I'm of course entirely in sympathy with your idea, Catherine, but I hope your 'service' education includes home-making and motherhood. Leave us a few of the old-fashioned women, won't you?"
"My dear, don't worry about homes and husbands and babies. It is the futile fashionable woman, not the disciplined, thoughtful, college-bred woman, that refuses to have children. I've never known an earnest woman that didn't love children and yearn for motherhood. The trouble is, men are afraid of the earnest kind. They marry the frivolous, parasitical women, who live upon them like lotus flowers, sapping their vitality and giving nothing in return. Yet you'll find men opposing college education for women, not realizing that a woman who has stood the discipline of a college course has developed a force of character that does not shrink for a moment from the further discipline and burden of motherhood, but welcomes it as her privilege and blessing, while the so-called 'society woman' will none of it. You know," Catherine continued, "in the days when home-making was necessarily an absorbing occupation, it lent to women a dignity of character quite wanting in our present-day large class of feminine parasites, a class that has grown out of the new and easier domestic conditions and the too-great concentration of wealth in the hands of a few. That's the explanation of woman's latter-day restlessness; she's fighting against the deterioration which comes with idleness and too-easy conditions of life. She's fighting for her very life! That's what the 'feminist movement' means."
"And my part in your fine scheme?" asked Margaret, her face glowing with responsive enthusiasm.
"As a rich and influential woman, you will countenance and patronize my school; perhaps send me your daughters; be a stock-holder in it; you can even be fitting yourself, meantime, if you like, to be a teacher in it."
"But, Catherine—'rich and influential?' I? I am neither!"
Catherine looked at her curiously. "What do you call 'rich,' Margaret?"
"Oh, I don't know. I've never handled money in my life. I've always had everything I actually required right at my hand. I am afraid I am absurdly ignorant about money. I never had any of my own."
As Margaret spoke, she glanced up to meet in Catherine's eyes a puzzled, questioning expression which she failed to interpret.