“You working women are getting too independent,” he said. “It makes us afraid. I heard someone say the other day in a certain distinguished company that you should not be a working woman.”
They all insisted on the rest of it, Mrs. Hubbell in the lead.
“Why, as a matter of fact, it wasn’t a man, as you all are thinking. It was Mrs. John Clapp—a discerning lady. She said ‘that to think of you waiting for street cars in the rain made her shudder’—not that she dislikes either street cars or rain but because she feels that you should be protected from both.”
Clouds on Langley’s face, the faintest amusement on Mrs. Hubbell’s and the frankest embarrassment on Horatia’s.
“He delights in baiting me,” she said laughingly and tried to turn the conversation. But she was helpless.
“Marjorie Clapp,” contributed Mrs. Hubbell, “is trying to make the old-fashioned woman fashionable. She knows that it’s the only chance the poor thing has to get back into favor. Make it fashionable to churn the butter and make the candles and that sort of thing will go. And Marjorie knows where she would shine! At a butter-churn!”
“Just where you wouldn’t, Rose,” said Kathleen Boyce, satirically, “the butter wouldn’t—what is it—wouldn’t butter—for you, ever.”
“Oh, I admit that. I admit a great deal of capability in Marjorie.”
“But what’s the use of churning butter,” Kathleen went on, “when you can buy it in beautiful molds and what’s the use of devoting all your time to a house and family when there are maids and nursemaids?”
“I don’t think it’s any good with maids and nursemaids having too much command,” said Horatia. She had forgotten that the conversation hinged on her. “They are all right for hotels. But a house has to express a woman—just as my aunt’s house in West Park with its Nottingham lace curtains and bronze alligators and coldly clean floors expresses her and just as Mrs. Clapp’s big, easy house expresses her.”