Judy was delighted to see the professor, and not nearly so astonished as
Molly had been, the truth being that Paul had told that young lady of
Edwin Green’s arrival, with the expectation that she would inform Molly.
But Judy, realizing the state of excitement that Molly was in,
determined to keep the news to herself and not give Molly anything more
to feel just then, even if in doing so she, Judy, would appear to be
careless and forgetful. Judy understood the regard that Molly had for
Professor Green—better than Molly herself did. She remembered Molly’s
expression and misery when little Otoyo, their Japanese friend at
Wellington, had told them of his being so dangerously ill with typhoid,
and how Molly had lost weight and could neither sleep nor eat until the
crisis had passed.
“Did you ever see such a beautiful wedding in your life?” said Judy.
“Never, and I am told it was all your plan, even to the holly-hock
background.”
“Well, you see the idea was floating around in the air, and I was just
the one who had her idea-net ready and caught it. Ideas are like
butterflies, anyhow—all flying around waiting to be pounced on—but the
thing is to have your net ready.”
“Yes, and another thing, not to handle the butterfly idea too roughly.
Many an idea, beautiful in itself, is ruined in the working out,” said
her companion.
“That is where taste comes in.”
Judy would have liked to chase the metaphor much farther with the
agreeable young man, but she remembered that she had set out to
fascinate Aunt Clay, and it was Aunt Sarah Clay to whom she had been
talking when Professor Green had come up. She introduced him, and Mrs.
Clay immediately pounced on him with a tirade against innovations of all
kinds.
Looking very much as we are led by the cartoonists to expect a
suffragist to look, Mrs. Clay was the most ardent “anti.” Opposed to all
progress and innovations, and constantly at war on the subject of higher
education of women, she carried her conservatism even to the point of
having her grain cut with a scythe instead of using the up-to-date
machinery. Professor Green was her natural enemy, for was he not
instructor in a girls’ school where, she was led to understand, belief
in equal suffrage was as necessary for entrance as the knowledge of
Latin or mathematics?
Professor Green, ignorant of the antagonism she felt for him and his
calling, endeavored to make himself as agreeable as possible to Molly’s
aunt. He listened with seeming respect to her attack on modernism and
then turned the subject to the wedding, her pretty nieces and
fine-looking nephews.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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