Robert did not ask Margaret to set the day for their marriage that day. It was no time for him to be planning his nuptials while his buddy was risking his life in the hospital. He told Margaret of the operation and she sympathized with him.
“What a dreadful thing the war is,” she said. “I don’t suppose you’d care to go anywhere under the circumstances. I can just understand the way you feel. We might just sit at home tonight if you wish and I’ll sing you some ballads.”
She confided her own troubles to him. Difficulty in getting the proper clothing in Corinth. Difficulty in getting her parents to appreciate her more liberal views. Difficulty in getting her mother to allow her to discard corsets. What had happened to the comparatively demure miss that Robert had left behind when he had left Corinth? Two years ago she would no more have dreamed of mentioning corsets than she would have dreamed of smoking a pipe. As for not wearing them, Robert remembered, with amusement, that whereas preachers in describing Corinth as a second Babylon two years ago had pointed to the fact that women were pinching in their waists and allowing their skirts to drag on the ground for the sake of increasing their fascination in the eyes of men, they were now decrying the shameless Jezebels who went with skirts but to their knees and without certain garments that women had always worn. Times had changed.
“I’m thinking of bobbing my hair,” said Margaret. She was curled up on the couch beside him in a childish posture which she would have thought unladylike before the war. “Irene Castle has bobbed hers. But mother has a fit whenever I mention the subject. She won’t even let me smoke. What do you think about it?”
“Oh, I suppose I’m a little old-fashioned—”
“All the men are like that. Howard says the same thing. Dad says it’s immoral. For heaven’s sakes, what’s the way you’ve got your hair combed got to do with morality? Or whether you smoke or not? Men can do everything and the minute a woman wants to do something they do, every one sits on her.”
Robert laughed.
“You look exactly like a small child protesting because you can’t have another piece of candy.”
Margaret pretended to cry in vexation.
“That’s the trouble with you men, you refuse to take us seriously.”