Labrador (N.L.) -- Fiction; London (England) -- Fiction; Love stories, English
At first he could form no plan at all for doing that. He determined that
research must still have his morning hours until lunch-time, and, he
privately resolved, some part of the night. The rest of his day, he
thought, he would set aside for a time to money-making. But he was
altogether inexperienced in the methods of money-making; it was a new
problem, and a new sort of problem to him altogether. He discovered
himself helpless and rather silly in the matter. The more obvious
possibilities seemed to be that he might lecture upon his science or
write. He communicated with a couple of lecture agencies, and was amazed
at their scepticism; no doubt he knew his science, on that point they
were complimentary in a profuse, unconvincing manner, but could he
interest like X--and here they named a notorious quack--could he _draw_?
He offered Science Notes to a weekly periodical; the editor answered
that for the purposes of his publication he preferred, as between
professors and journalists, journalists. "You real scientific men," he
said, "are no doubt a thousand times more accurate and novel and all
that, but as no one seems able to understand you----" He went to his old
fellow-student, Gwenn, who was editing _The Scientific Review_, and
through him he secured some semi-popular lectures, which involved, he
found, travelling about twenty-nine miles weekly at the rate of
four-and-sixpence a mile--counting nothing for the lectures. Afterwards
Gwenn arranged for some regular notes on physics and micro-chemistry.
Trafford made out a weekly time-table, on whose white of dignity,
leisure, and the honourable pursuit of knowledge, a diaper of red marked
the claims of domestic necessity.
§ 5
It was astonishing how completely this coming child dominated the whole
atmosphere and all the circumstances of the Traffords. It became their
central fact, to which everything else turned and pointed. Its effect on
Marjorie's circle of school and college friends was prodigious. She was
the first of their company to cross the mysterious boundaries of a
woman's life. She became to them a heroine mingled with something of the
priestess. They called upon her more abundantly and sat with her, noted
the change in her eyes and voice and bearing, talking with a kind of awe
and a faint diffidence of the promised new life.
Many of them had been deeply tinged by the women's suffrage movement,
the feminist note was strong among them, and when one afternoon Ottiline
Winchelsea brought round Agatha Alimony, the novelist, and Agatha said
in that deep-ringing voice of hers: "I hope it will be a girl, so that
presently she may fight the battle of her sex," there was the
profoundest emotion. But when Marjorie conveyed that to Trafford he was
lacking in response.
"I want a boy," he said, and, being pressed for a reason, explained:
"Oh, one likes to have a boy. I want him with just your quick eyes and
ears, my dear, and just my own safe and certain hands."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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