"Let them!"
The contemptuous tone irritated Mrs. Marvell. But at the same time she could not help admiring her eldest daughter, as she sat there in the fire-light, her quiet well-cut dress, her delicate hands and feet. It was true indeed, she was a scarce-crow for thinness, and looked years older—"somehow gone to pieces"—thought the mother, vaguely, and with a queer, sudden pang.
"And you're going on with it?"
"What? Militancy? Of course we are—more than ever!"
"Why, the men laugh at you, Gertrude!"
"They won't laugh—by the time we've done," said Gertrude, with apparent indifference. Her mother had not sufficient subtlety of perception to see that the indifference was now assumed, to hide the quiver of nerves, irreparably injured by excitement and overstrain.
"Well, all I know is, it's against nature to suppose that women can fight men." Mrs. Marvell's remarks were rather like the emergence of scattered spars from a choppy sea.
"We shall fight them," said Gertrude, sourly—"And what's more, we shall beat them."
"All the same we've got to live with them!" cried her mother, suddenly flushing, as old memories swept across her.
"Yes,—on our terms—not theirs!"