“Go right on,” Bret said, with labored restraint. “Don’t mind me. I’m old-fashioned. I believe that a good home with a loving husband and some nice kids is good enough for a good woman. I believe that such a life is a success. Where should a wife be but at home?”
“That depends on the wife, Bret. Most wives belong at home, yes. Most men belong at home, too. They are born farmers and shoemakers and school-teachers and chemists and inventors, and all glory to them for staying there. But where did Christopher Columbus belong? Where would you be if he had stayed at home?”
“But Sheila isn’t a man!”
“Well, then, did Florence Nightingale belong at home? or Joan of Arc?”
“Oh, well, nurses and patriots and people like that!”
“What about Jenny Lind and Patti?”
“They were singers.”
“And Sheila is a singer, only in unaccompanied recitative. Actors are nurses and doctors, too; they take people who are sick of their hard day’s work and they cure ’em up, give ’em a change of climate.”
“Home was good enough for our mothers,” Bret grumbled, sinking back obstinately in his chair.
“Oh no, it wasn’t.”