“I see no evidence of a lessening interest yet,” replied her father.
“Oh, I might know that you would encourage her. She might as well have the small-pox as far as her prospects go! A needle is a woman’s weapon.”
“You forget her tongue, mother,” suggested Dine. “Oh, Tessa, what is that about a needle; Mrs. Browning says it.”
Tessa repeated:
“‘A woman takes a housewife from her breast,
And plucks the delicatest needle out
As ’twere a rose, and pricks you carefully
’Neath nails, ’neath eyelids, in your nostrils,—say,
A beast would roar so tortured—but a man,
A human creature, must not, shall not flinch,
No, not for shame.’”
“Some woman wrote that when she’d have done better to be sewing for her husband, I’ll warrant,” commented Mrs. Wadsworth. Mr. Wadsworth looked grave.
“Oh she had a literary husband,” replied Tessa, mischievously. “A word that rhymed with supper would do instead of bread and butter; and he cared more for one of her poems than he did for his buttons.”
“Literary men don’t grow on every bush; and they don’t take to literary women, either,” said her mother.
“Mother, you forget the Howitts, William and Mary; what good, good times they have taking long walks and writing; like you and Gus, Tessa, and Mr. and Mrs. Browning—”
“You don’t find such people in Dunellen; we live in Dunellen. Gus will choose a woman that doesn’t care for books, and so will Mr. Towne, mark my words! And so will Felix Harrison, even if he is killing himself with study.”