Feminist fiction; Women -- Social and moral questions -- Fiction; Young women -- Fiction
"Oh, I might," Kate insisted. "If I had babies of my own, I'd like them
to be hard, brown little savages--the sort you could put on donkey-back
or camel-back and take anywhere."
Mrs. Hays shook her head at the idea of camels. It hardly sounded
Christian, and certainly it in no way met her notion of the need
of infants.
"Mrs. Browning writes about taking her baby to a mountain-top not far
from the stars," Kate went on. "They rode donkey-back, I believe.
Personally, however, I should prefer the camel. For one thing, you could
get more babies on his back."
Mrs. Hays threw a glance at her mistress as if to say: "Is it proper for
a young woman to talk like this?"
The young woman in question said many things which, according to the
always discreet and sensible Mrs. Hays, were hardly to be commended.
There was, for example, the evening she had stood in the westward end of
the veranda and called:--
"Archangels! Come quick and see them!"
The summons was so stirring that they all ran,--even Honora, who was
just beginning to move about the house,--but Wander reached Kate's
side first.
"She's right, Honora," he announced. "It is archangels--a whole party of
them. Come, see!"
But it had been nothing save a sunset rather brighter than usual, with
wing-like radiations.
"Pshaw!" said Mrs. Hays confidentially to the cook.
"Shouldn't you think they'd burn up with all that flaming crimson on
them?" Kate cried. "And, oh, their golden hair! Or does that belong to
the Damosel? Probably she is leaning over the bar of heaven at
this minute."
In Mrs. Hays's estimation, the one good thing about all such talk was
that Mrs. Fulham seemed to like it. Sometimes she smiled; and she hung
upon the arm of her friend and looked at her as if wondering how one
could be so young and strong and gay. Mr. Wander, too, seemed never
tired of listening; and the way that letters trailed after this young
woman showed her that a number--quite an astonishingly large number--of
persons were pleased to whet their ideas on her. Clarinda Hays decided
that she would like to try it herself; so one morning when she sat on
the veranda watching the slumbers of the little girls in their hammocks,
and Miss Barrington sat near at hand fashioning a blouse for Honora's
journey, she ventured:--
"You're a suffragette, ain't you, Miss?"
"Why, yes," admitted Kate. "I suppose I am. I believe in suffrage for
women, at any rate."
"Well, what do you make of all them carryings-on over there in England,
ma'am? You don't approve of acid-throwing and window-breaking and
cutting men's faces with knives, do you?" She looked at Kate with an
almost poignant anxiety, her face twitching a little with her
excitement. "A decent woman couldn't put her stamp on that kind
o' thing."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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