Man-woman relationships -- Fiction; Women -- Fiction
“I am a suffragist!” she announced one day in swift assertion.
And Eleanor More looked up with a quiet smile. “I am one, too,” she
replied.
Annabel stared at her a minute. “I didn’t know you were—a
suffragist!”
Then she looked at her with slow suspicion.
“You know what a suffragist is, don’t you?”
“Yes.” Eleanor went on with her sewing.
“Oh—I Well.... am going to march—in the procession!” She was
watching her mother’s face.
“When is the procession?” There was a little upward twist to
Eleanor’s lip that might have been amusement at her position, or
dismay. “When did you say the procession is?”
“Next week—Monday.... You going to march?”
“Yes.” Eleanor threaded her needle and drew in the end and twisted
it into a skilful knot. “Yes—I think I shall march.” It was quite
casual, and she inspected her work.
“Well—!” Annabel turned it in her mind. “You’d better get
a short skirt—if you are going to march. You haven’t a thing that
clears the mud!”
“Very well.”
So Annabel had out her mother’s wardrobe and turned and planned, and
had a woman in to shorten a skirt for her. And all the days before the
parade, she watched her solicitously, and waited on her—as if she were
an invalid.
“I can’t bear to have you march in that old parade!” she exclaimed
almost viciously.
“I don’t mind it.”
“I don’t suppose you do.... But I mind it for you!” She rumpled
her hair, with a quick gesture, like a boy’s. “I’ve no idea what
they’ll do. They may throw sticks at you, or—eggs!”
“Well, if it doesn’t hurt you, it won’t hurt me,” said Eleanor
placidly.
Annabel stared at her. Then she smiled. She shook her head.
“It isn’t the same thing,” she declared. “You little know—how
much it isn’t the same thing!”
And, after all, the parade was not so terrible. They assembled quietly,
and with importance, at the city hall and marched through the principal
streets, and had speeches; and Eleanor and Annabel marched side by side.
And Annabel was so busy guarding her mother from unpleasant experiences,
and looking after her comfort, and providing places for her to sit down
when the procession stopped a minute, that she quite forgot to have
experiences of her own or to be thrilled or frightened at her temerity,
or any of the exciting things that her imagination had cast beforehand.
“I call it a rather tame performance!” she declared at dinner that
night, after it was over, “—a rather tame performance!”
And Richard, who had stood on the sidewalk and watched his wife and
daughter march past, with a little amused smile, nodded assent.
“You made a mistake taking your mother, perhaps?” he suggested
mildly.
Annabel cast a quick glance at her mother’s unperturbed face, and her
look lightened.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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