"I do not know," said the Judge, "what young ladies are coming to! I have never had time, nor, I may say, inclination, to read Ibsen myself, but of course I know the kind of thing he's responsible for. And, frankly, I should not permit my daughter to read that book!"
"Oh," said Marie, "I don't think myself it is a book for a child!"
"She's not a child. She's twenty-six. I should dissuade my wife, too, from reading it."
"Then your wife," answered Marie, "would miss an illuminating piece of literature."
Elizabeth came in with her serene voice. "Don't you think, Judge Black, that we all acquire a habit of judging a writer, whom we haven't yet had time to study for ourselves, too much in terms of some review or other, or of the mere unthinking, current talk? I think we all do it. I believe when you read Ibsen you will feel differently about him."
"Not I!" said the Judge. "I have seen extracts enough. I tell you, Miss Eden, the age is reading too much of such decadent stuff—"
"Oh, 'decadent'!"
"And it is read, amazingly, by women. I would rather see my wife or daughter with the old dramatists at their worst in their hands than with stuff like that—! Overturning all our concepts, criticizing supremacies—I beg your pardon, Miss Caton, but if you knew how women, nowadays, amaze me—"
"Stop hectoring, Black," said the General mellowly. "She's not in the dock. Just so that women stay women, they can fill their heads with what stuff they will—"