Edith glanced past Carl, and looked with arch inquiry at Dick Rowan.
He was perfectly self-possessed, and spoke even with a slight air of authority. “I believe the true superiority of woman to be in religion,” he said; “and, if she has that, it is no matter whether she is learned or not.”
“But is not your view somewhat ascetical?” asked Carl Yorke. “We are supposing that this life is something. Looking at the question in that light, I would say that no one has the right to dogmatize one way or the other. Let each woman follow the bent of her own mind, and be as learned as she will. I only stipulate that she shall not be loud-voiced nor disputatious, but wear her learning with a grace, as an ornament, not a weapon, though she may use it as a weapon when there is need. I would have woman wear erudition, as Mrs. Browning says men wear grief who have worn it long:
‘As a hat aside,
With a flower stuck in it.’”
“And while your erudite wife is gracefully adjusting her ologies, who is to see to the bread and the buttons?” Melicent asked, rather sneeringly.
“Oh! those everlasting buttons!” Clara cried out, and put her hands over her ears.
“The servant, probably,” Carl replied to Melicent. “If a woman could give some thought to those things also, well and good, but I should not choose a wife for such a service. I would rather have her help me to polish a sentence or pose a figure than cook my dinner or mend my stockings, unless we were so poor that labor was absolutely necessary. I should be ashamed to see my wife performing menial services for me. I would as willingly see her at work in the field as bringing me my slippers.”
Carl had scarcely time to see the look of beaming approval in Edith’s eyes, before his sight and hearing were both temporarily lost in Clara’s rapturous embrace. “You are perfect!” she cried, kissing him. “You are of the progeny of Apollo! I am so glad to have that slipper theory upset; for I never saw a woman bringing her husband’s slippers for him without feeling a contempt for her. I don’t believe that any one ever admired such a piece of mean servility, except the lazy Turk who allowed it to be done for him.”
While they laughed at Clara’s enthusiasm, Dick Rowan said to Edith, “I quite agree with your cousin. I mean all that he means, and more.”
“By the way,” Carl said carelessly, as he went toward the door, “I am not Edith’s cousin, nor in any way related to her.”