We both laughed at this; it was, in fact, a joke we were the joint authors of.
“Well, we don't often talk about my ailments; I haven't got a great many; and generally we get on some abstract topic. Just now we're running the question of female education, perhaps because it's impersonal, and we can both treat of it without prejudice.”
“The doctor isn't married, I believe?”
“He's a widower of long standing, and that's the best kind of doctor to have: then he's a kind of a bachelor with practical wisdom added. You see, I've always had the idea that women, beginning with little girls and ending with grandmothers, ought to be brought up as nearly like their brothers as can be—that is, if they are to be the wives of other women's brothers. It don't so much matter how an old maid is brought up, but you can't have her destiny in view, though I believe if an old maid could be brought up more like an old bachelor she would be more comfortable to herself, anyway.”
“And what does Dr. Denbigh say?”
“Well, you must hear him talk. I guess he rather wants to draw me out, for the most part.”
“I don't wonder at that. I wish you'd draw yourself out. I've thought something in the direction of your opinion myself.”
“Have you? That's good! We'll tackle the doctor together sometime. The difficulty about putting a thing like that in practice is that you have to co-operate in it with women who have been brought up in the old way. A man's wife is a woman—”
“Generally,” I assented, as if for argument's sake.
He gave himself time to laugh. “And she has the charge of the children as long as they're young, and she's a good deal more likely to bring up the boys like girls than the girls like boys. But the boys take themselves out of her hands pretty soon, while the girls have to stay under her thumb till they come out just the kind of women we've always had.”