The sturdy oak : $b a composite novel of American politics by fourteen American authors
General
The sturdy oak : $b a composite novel of American politics by fourteen American authors
New York (State) -- Fiction; Political fiction; Satire; Suffragists -- Fiction; Women -- New York (State) -- Fiction; Women -- Suffrage -- Fiction
"Oh, dearest Jinny, doesn't it seem like a dream that we're all going to
be together, all we women, in a real home, with a real man at the head
of it to direct us and give us of his strength! It does seem just like
that beautiful old-fashioned home that George drew such an exquisite
picture of, in his article, where the home was the center of the world
to the women in it. It will be to me, I assure you, dear. I feel as
though I had come to a haven, and as though I _never_ would want to
leave it!"
The expressmen were carrying up another trunk now, and so conscious of
the glittering eyes of mastery upon them that they carried it as though
it were the Ark of the Covenant and they its chosen priests. Mrs.
Brewster-Smith followed them with a firm tread, throwing over her
shoulder to the stone Genevieve below, "Oh, my dear, little Eleanor
and her nurse will be in soon. Frieda was taking Eleanor for her usual
afternoon walk. Will you just send them upstairs when they come! I
suppose Frieda will have the room in the third story, that extra room
that was finished off when Uncle Henry lived here. Emelene, you'd better
come right up, too, if you expect to get unpacked before dinner."
She disappeared, and Emelene fluttered up after her, drawn along by
suction, apparently, like a sheet of paper in the wake of a train.
The expressmen came downstairs, still treading softly, and went out.
Genevieve was alone again in her front hall. To her came tiptoeing
Marie, with wide eyes of query and alarm. And from Marie's questioning
face, Genevieve fled away like one fleeing from the plague.
"Don't ask me, Marie! Don't _speak_ to me. Don't you dare ask me what...
or I'll..." She was at the front door as she spoke, poised for flight
like a terrified doe. "I must see Mr. Remington! I don't know _what_ to
tell you, Marie, till I have seen Mr. Remington! I must see my husband!
I don't know what to say, I don't know what to _think_, until I have
seen my husband."
Calling this eminently wifely sentiment over her shoulder she ran
down the front walk, hatless, wrapless, just as she was in her pretty
flowered and looped-up bride's house dress. She couldn't have run faster
if the house had been on fire.
The clicking of her high heels on the concrete sidewalk was a rattling
tattoo so eloquent of disorganized panic that more than one head was
thrust from a neighboring window to investigate, and more than one head
was pulled back, nodding to the well-worn and charitable hypothesis,
"Their first quarrel." The hypothesis would instantly have been
withdrawn if any one had continued looking after the fleeing bride long
enough to see her, regardless of passers-by, fling herself wildly into
her husband's arms as he descended from the trolley-car at the corner.
Betty Sheridan was sitting in the drawing-room of her parents' house,
rather moodily reading a book on the _Balance of Trade_.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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