“If you imagine that I admire Miss Plympton—”
“I never thought anything of the kind. Why shouldn’t you admire her? Though she is a little too fond of hunting, she is a nice girl, and I like her. And she is very pretty. You might do a great deal worse, Roland,” said Rosalind, with maternal gravity, “than admire Ethel Plympton. She is quite a nice girl, not only when she is on horseback. But she would not have anything to say to you.”
“That is just as well,” said the young man, “for hers is not the sort of shrine I should ever worship at. The kind of girl I like doesn’t hunt, though she goes like a bird when it strikes her fancy. She is the queen at home, she makes a room like this into heaven. She makes a man feel that there’s nothing in life half so sweet as to be by her, whatever she is doing. She would make hard work and poverty and all that sort of thing delightful. She is—”
“A dreadful piece of perfection!” said Rosalind, with a slightly embarrassed laugh. “Don’t you know nobody likes to have that sort of person held up to them? One always suspects girls that are too good. But I hope you sometimes think of other things than girls,” she added, with an air of delightful gravity and disapproval. “I have wanted all this long time to know what you were going to do; and to find instead only that hyperbolical fiend, you know, that talks of nothing but ladies, is disappointing. What would you think of me,” Rosalind continued, turning upon him with still more imposing dignity, “if I talked to you of nothing but gentlemen?”
“Rosalind!—that’s blasphemy to think of; besides that I should feel like getting behind a hedge and shooting all of them,” the young man cried.
“Yes, it is a sort of blasphemy; you would all think a girl a dreadful creature if she did so. But you think you are different, and that it doesn’t matter; that is what everybody says; one law for men and one for women. But I, for one, will never give in to that. I want to know what you are going to do.”
“And suppose,” he cried, “that I were to return the question, since you say there must not be one law for men and one for women. Rosalind, what are you going to do?”
“I?” she said, and looked at him with surprise. “Alas! you know I have my work cut out for me, Roland. I have to bring up the children; they are very young, and it will be a great many years before they can do without me; there is no question about me. Perhaps it is a good thing to have your path quite clear before you, so that you can’t make any mistake about it,” she added, with a little sigh.
“But, Rosalind, that is completely out of the question, don’t you know. Sacrifice yourself and all your life to those children—why, it would be barbarous; nobody would permit it.”
“I don’t know,” said Rosalind, “who has any right to interfere. You think Uncle John, perhaps? Uncle John would never think of anything so foolish. It is much less his business than it is mine; and you forget that I am old enough to judge for myself.”