Man-woman relationships -- Fiction; Women -- Fiction
“You seem to have misunderstood me entirely,” retorted the blue-eyed
girl, severely, “I am feeling quite happy. Indeed, I don’t know that I
ever felt happier in my life, unless it was the day upon which I was
mistaken for my younger sister!”
“But what are you going to do in regard to Jack?”
“Why, Emily Marshmallow, how stupid you are to-day! You seem to
imagine that I want to be flattered, like a man, by being asked to
explain things. I told you, didn’t I? that Jack and I quarreled about
his membership in a new club. Very well, I too, have decided to join a
club!”
“Humph, that isn’t a bad idea. But what kind of a club? An Ibsen or a
Browning one, I suppose. I notice that men dislike particularly to have
us members of really intellectual clubs.”
“Well, I did think of either an Ibsen or a Symphony club, but neither
of them just seemed to suit me, so—well, the fact is that I’ve decided
to found a club of my own.”
“But even then you can’t always have it to suit you, because the other
members—”
“Oh, yes, I shall dear. You see, I’ll make all the—the by-laws and
resolutions just as I want them, before I invite any one to join the
club. I think I shall ask Evelyn to be the president, because she is
married and accustomed already to making somebody do as she wishes.”
“Dear, dear, I’m only afraid that you are too clever to—”
“Succeed? Not quite so bad as that, I hope. Now, you see, the chief
objection to Jack’s new club was that he wouldn’t tell me anything
about it. Said he didn’t know just what its purpose was. As if a man
would join a club without knowing—”
“I begin to see now. You mean to keep the purpose of your own club a
secret, too?”
“That’s just it, and when Jack hears how nice it is, he’ll find out
that we are a great deal cleverer than he thinks. I shall make the
membership for life too, so—”
“But you haven’t even told me the purpose of the club yet.”
“The Advancement of Woman, dear. Jack hates advanced women and when I
make up with him—”
“But you said a moment ago that you would never—”
“Good gracious, Emily,” cried the blue-eyed girl, hastily, “do stop
talking a moment and let me get in a word edgewise: I’ve been trying
for half an hour to get a chance to ask you where the new waist you
offered to show me, is, and I can’t—”
“Here it is in my wardrobe and isn’t it a dream? You may try it on, if
you like.”
“Thank you, dear; but no. I care so little for such frivolities, now
that I have come to enjoy the real intellectual life. Did you ever see
such darling sleeves? It does seem that a girl who could not be happy
in them must—”
“Have at least a boil on her chin! Yes, doesn’t it? But really,
Dorothy, you make me ashamed of caring so much for such vanities. Why,
those very sleeves cost me two whole nights’ rest!”
“Never mind about that, dear; we can’t all be intellectual. Look here,
Emily Marshmallow, if you’ll promise never to breathe it as long as you
live, I’ll tell you the last mean thing that Frances—”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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