“Yes, ma’am,” answered Willie, “my mother always said I wasn’t half so bad as I looked; and she’s aware that I’m absent from home.”
At this point Willie allowed a gleam of intelligence to shoot across his face, and he winked to Emma, who thereupon went into private convulsions in her handkerchief.
“Emelina,” said Miss Deemas solemnly, “let me warn you against that boy. He is a bad specimen of a bad sex. He is a precocious type of that base, domineering, proud and perfidious creature that calls itself ‘lord of creation,’ and which, in virtue of its superior physical power, takes up every position in life worth having,” (“except that of wife and mother,” meekly suggested Miss Tippet), “worth having” (repeated the eagle sternly, as if the position of wife and mother were not worth having), “worth having, and leaves nothing for poor weak-bodied, though not weak-minded woman to do, except sew and teach brats. Bah! I hate men, and they hate me, I know it, and I would not have it otherwise. I wish they had never been made. I wish there had been none in the world but women. What a blessed world it would have been then!”
Miss Deemas hit the table with her hand, in a masculine manner, so forcibly, that the plates and glasses rattled, then she resumed, for she was now on a favourite theme, and was delivering a lecture to a select audience.
“But, mark you, I’m not going to be put down by men. I mean to fight ’em with their own weapons. I mean to—”
She paused suddenly at this point, and, descending from her platform, advised Miss Tippet to dismiss the boy at once.
Poor Miss Tippet prepared to do so. She was completely under the power of Miss Deemas, whom, strange to say, she loved dearly. She really believed that they agreed with each other on most points, although it was quite evident that they were utterly opposed to each other in everything. Wherein the bond lay no philosopher could discover. Possibly it lay in the fact that they were absolute extremes, and, in verification of the proverb, had met.
Be this as it may, a note was quickly written to her brother, Thomas Tippet, Esquire, which was delivered to Willie, with orders to take it the following evening to London Bridge, in the neighbourhood of which Mr Tippet dwelt and carried on his business.