“She did not originally set out with the idea of being a sort of amiable cow. She once aspired to be quite human; she really did, poor thing!”
“Then why didn’t she do it?” asked Algitha contemptuously.
“Instead of doing a thing, she had to be perpetually struggling for the chance to do it, which she never achieved, and so she was submerged. That seems to be the fatality in a woman’s life.”
“Well, there is one thing I am very sure of,” announced Algitha, leaning majestically against a column of the temple, and looking like a beautiful Greek maiden, in her simple gown, “I do not intend to be a cow. I do not mean to fight a losing battle. I will not wait at home meekly, till some fool holds out his sceptre to me.”
All eyes turned to her, in astonishment.
“But what are you going to do?” asked a chorus of voices. Hadria’s was not among them, for she knew what was coming. The debate of last night, and this morning’s discussion, had evidently brought to a climax a project that Algitha had long had in her mind, but had hesitated to carry out, on account of the distress that it would cause to her mother. Algitha’s eyes glittered, and her colour rose.
“I am not going to be hawked about the county till I am disposed of. It does not console me in the least, that all the foxes are without tails,” she went on, taking short cuts to her meaning, in her excitement. “I am going to London with Mrs. Trevelyan, to help her in her work.”
“By Jove!” exclaimed Fred. Ernest whistled. Austin stared, with open mouth.
Having recovered from the first shock of surprise, the family plied their sister with questions. She said that she had long been thinking of accepting the post offered her by Mrs. Trevelyan last year, and now she was resolved. The work was really wise, useful work among the poor, which Algitha felt she could do well. At home, there was nothing that she did that the housekeeper could not do better. She felt herself fretting and growing irritable, for mere want of some active employment. This was utterly absurd, in an overworked world. Hadria had her music and her study, at any rate, but Algitha had nothing that seemed worth doing; she did not care to paint indifferently on china; she was a mere encumbrance—a destroyer, as Hadria put it—while there was so much, so very much, that waited to be done. The younger sister made no comment.
“Next time I meet Harold Wilkins,” said Fred, drawing a long breath, “I will tell him that if a girl does not marry, she can devote herself to the poor.”