Lady Wereminster flashed.
"Don't tar us all with the same brush. There are wives and wives, remember; most of us ought to go through a training school for marriage. I'm sure useless subjects enough are taught in modern schools. 'How to be a good wife' would be an attractive variety."
"Modern girls' schools are becoming more like boys'—delightful playgrounds."
"I approve of hockey and the rest in their way," said Lady Wereminster. "If the modern woman would only take her marriage as seriously as she does her games she might even bring human nature into repute again. Marriage is the only profession which a woman enters with absolutely no doubt of her competency. She may be the most irresponsible creature in the world, but she thinks the art of ruling a household is like love or measles—easily caught. I don't know how it is in your Church, Evelyn, but in ours no spiritual director would dream of suggesting advice in such a matter unless he were directly asked to interfere. And yet the duties are apparent. Any woman may make or mar any man with whom she is in daily contact. A woman can drag a man down in more ways than one. A wife can belittle her husband at every turn—can, by persistently treating him as an inferior in his own house, end by making him inferior. She can swamp his energy with her idleness, freeze his love of work with her indifference, fritter his money away on trifles until he loses all desire to save for a rainy day, deny him pleasure and outlet at every turn. I have no sympathy for such wives when their husbands leave them. In many cases, indeed, they would never stay but for the children."
"'A training school for wives founded by the Countess of Wereminster,'" said Brand maliciously. "High fees, of course. Shall we draw up the prospectus now? Will you accept my wife and Mrs. Farquharson as teachers, Lady Wereminster?"
"Delighted—if you'll agree to go in for the necessary examination as a husband," said Lady Wereminster promptly.
"'We do not what we ought,
What we ought not, we do,
And lean upon the thought
That chance will bring us through,'"
suggested Creagh, smiling.
"Talk of duties," interposed Mrs. Farquharson, raising her voice, "mine are simply appalling. They were bad enough in my father's house; they are a hundred times worse now. But, of course, in my position they would necessarily be very arduous. And in the future—oh, but I mustn't talk of that; that's a political secret."
"Rather an open one," said Brand very softly. "We have eyes and ears, Mrs. Farquharson. Your husband deserves the splendid luck you have brought him."