“Yes, dear; but it isn’t quite that. It is not only of opinions that I am speaking, it is the encouraging way in which you consent to my entering on this somewhat pronounced question.”
“I have absolute faith in your judgment,” said Alfred Whittaker; and again he composed himself for his after-dinner nap.
Regina sat looking at him as he slumbered. Her heart was very full, for she was an affectionate woman, and, in spite of her little airs and pretensions, she was really a good woman at bottom. Her heart swelled with pride to think that this was her husband, this handsome, portly, dignified man with a presence, an air of being somebody, this man who was so good, so easy to live with, such a good husband and such an affectionate father. And to think that he was hers! As I have said already, her heart thrilled within her.
It was true that others might not have agreed with Regina in her estimate of her husband. The outer world might have thought him anything but handsome, might have thought that he had anything rather than a presence. What Regina called portly, a less tender critic might have described in an extremely unpleasant manner; but, you see, Regina looked at him with eyes of possession, and the eyes of possession are ever somewhat biassed.
So her thoughts ran pleasantly on. Yes, it was indeed sweet to be so blessed as she was in her home life. She had once believed that her life was a wasted one. Well, that was in the foolish days, before she had tried her wings. Not that she ever regarded her flights into the world of higher thought with the very smallest regret; that could never be. Enlightenment is always enlightenment, whether it is actually paying in a monetary sense or not. She firmly believed that an elaborate and somewhat masculine education had enabled her to become a better wife and mother than she would have been had she been contented with the genteel education which her parents had thought good enough, further than which indeed their minds had never attempted to fly. Perhaps, her thoughts ran, her mission in life was to bring enlightenment to the minds of other women, in a somewhat different way to that which she had hitherto accepted as the most reasonable. Be that as it may, Regina entered upon her duties as President of the S.R.W., armed with the full sanction of her husband’s permission and approval.
To all her friends she was an amazing and, at the same time, an amusing study about this epoch.
“I am perfectly certain,” remarked Mrs. M’Quade to the mother of the little girl who at school was called Tuppenny, “I am perfectly certain that Mrs. Whittaker has at last found her metier. Are you going to join her scheme for the regeneration of women?”
“I don’t think so,” replied the lady who lived at Highthorn. “My husband is so very sneering when anything of the kind is mentioned. I shouldn’t mind for myself; I think it would be rather fun. They are going to have tea-parties and soirées, and all sorts of amusements. But George would be so full of his fun, that I don’t feel somehow it would be good enough for me to go into. Besides, it’s three guineas a year. As far as I can tell,” she continued, “from what Mrs. Whittaker has told me, there won’t be any real regeneration of women in our day. It may come in the day of our grandchildren, but I don’t feel inclined to work for that.”
“That shows a great want of public spirit,” remarked the doctor’s wife, laughingly.
“Yes, I daresay it does, but I don’t believe women are public-spirited, except here and there—generally when they have made a failure of their own lives, as my old man always says.”