"If," said Josephine, with an emphasis on the conjunction, and
repeating it still more emphatically, "if it were necessary I would not
say a word. If Winona were one of seven girls, I should be sorry, but
I would not say a word. If it had been Josie, I should have been
rather pleased--which shows, Fred, that I am not altogether hostile to
the spirit of the age. But I am not prepared as yet to see my only
really handsome daughter--and such a handsome one, Fred--fly in the
face of convention and custom merely--merely to please Miss Jacket and
the people who never have a chance to go anywhere."
All Josephine's combativeness and pride of opinion seemed to ooze
suddenly away, and she buried her face on my shoulder, murmuring--
"Oh, yes, the whole system of society for girls is ridiculous and
degenerating. I know it, I know it perfectly well. I don't approve of
it, I never have approved of it. I wonder that so many come out of it
as well as they do. And they are not content as in my day to be merely
giddy; they go in now for smoking cigarettes and drinking liqueurs
after dinner, and some of them paint their faces. Not all of them, of
course, not one-tenth of them; Josie will never do anything of the
kind. I ought, though, to be thankful, heartily thankful, if Winona
prefers to stay away from all this and to develop worthy tastes of her
own. She shall do what she pleases, Fred, only----"
My darling stopped short as though she had concluded not to complete
her sentence. She gulped bravely and lifted her eyes to mine.
"Kiss me, dear," she whispered. "I am not really so worldly as you
think."
"You are an angel, and will never be anything else to me," I responded,
stroking her hair.
She lay still for a moment, happy but pensive. "She shall do whatever
she pleases; only it is a very much easier matter for you to be
virtuous and to say, 'Let her study medicine,' than for me."
"I have not said so, dearest."
"You have thought so, though. You do not need to speak to have me know
when you are thinking things. No man can possibly conceive what it
means to a mother to have a daughter a radiant beauty and peculiar."
"I dare say not," I murmured, humbly.
"Especially," she continued, reflectively, "when you consider that,
though society is foolish, there is really nothing else at present to
take its place to give a girl what nothing else is likely to give
her--I do not say nothing else can give it to her, but nothing else is
in the least likely to; and when you consider the vast number of wives
and mothers who have been through it all when they were young, and are
charming and--yes, Fred, sensible, intelligent women to-day. I don't
pretend that I myself am half what I might have been, but I went
through it all as a girl without becoming absolutely vapid and
volatile. Didn't I, dear?"
"You certainly did, Josephine. If Winona turns out your equal I shall
be more than satisfied."
"Thank you, dear, but you mustn't say it. I do wish her to have more
mind. My mind was more or less neglected; but, on the other hand,
Fred, I never had the opportunity to be peculiar, for there was no
chance to be in those days. Now the disease is liable to break out in
any family. All we can do, Fred, is to remember that we are growing
old, and to trust that the world of to-day is wiser than we."
"Amen!" I murmured.
And yet the consciousness that Josephine passed through it all and is
what she is, makes me feel a little doubtful still on the score of the
new dispensation, in spite of the mushrooms with rich gray gravy.