The Doctor rose with a gesture of despair. “I can’t imagine what has come over you both,” said he.
“My dear papa, we are trying hard to live up to Mrs. Westmacott’s standard.”
“Well, I must say that I do not admire the result. Your chemistry, Ida, may perhaps do no harm; but your scheme, Clara, is out of the question. How a girl of your sense could ever entertain such a notion is more than I can imagine. But I must absolutely forbid you to go further with it.”
“But, pa,” asked Ida, with an air of innocent inquiry in her big blue eyes, “what are we to do when your commands and Mrs. Westmacott’s advice are opposed? You told us to obey her. She says that when women try to throw off their shackles, their fathers, brothers and husbands are the very first to try to rivet them on again, and that in such a matter no man has any authority.”
“Does Mrs. Westmacott teach you that I am not the head of my own house?” The Doctor flushed, and his grizzled hair bristled in his anger.
“Certainly. She says that all heads of houses are relics of the dark ages.”
The Doctor muttered something and stamped his foot upon the carpet. Then without a word he passed out into the garden and his daughters could see him striding furiously up and down, cutting off the heads of the flowers with a switch.
“Oh, you darling! You played your part so splendidly!” cried Ida.
“But how cruel it is! When I saw the sorrow and surprise in his eyes I very nearly put my arms about him and told him all. Don’t you think we have done enough?”
“No, no, no. Not nearly enough. You must not turn weak now, Clara. It is so funny that I should be leading you. It is quite a new experience. But I know I am right. If we go an as we are doing, we shall be able to say all our lives that we have saved him. And if we don’t, oh, Clara, we should never forgive ourselves.”
WOMEN OF THE FUTURE.
From that day the Doctor’s peace was gone. Never was a quiet and orderly household transformed so suddenly into a bear garden, or a happy man turned into such a completely miserable one. He had never realized before how entirely his daughters had shielded him from all the friction of life. Now that they had not only ceased to protect him, but had themselves become a source of trouble to him, he began to understand how great the blessing was which he had enjoyed, and to sigh for the happy days before his girls had come under the influence of his neighbor.
“You don’t look happy,” Mrs. Westmacott had remarked to him one morning. “You are pale and a little off color. You should come with me for a ten mile spin upon the tandem.”
“I am troubled about my girls.” They were walking up and down in the garden. From time to time there sounded from the house behind them the long, sad wail of a French horn.
“That is Ida,” said he. “She has taken to practicing on that dreadful instrument in the intervals of her chemistry. And Clara is quite as bad. I declare it is getting quite unendurable.”
“Ah, Doctor, Doctor!” she cried, shaking her forefinger, with a gleam of her white teeth. “You must live up to your principles–you must give your daughters the same liberty as you advocate for other women.”
“Liberty, madam, certainly! But this approaches to license.”
“The same law for all, my friend.” She tapped him reprovingly on the arm with her sunshade. “When you were twenty your father did not, I presume, object to your learning chemistry or playing a musical instrument. You would have thought it tyranny if he had.”
“But there is such a sudden change in them both.”
“Yes, I have noticed that they have been very enthusiastic lately in the cause of liberty. Of all my disciples I think that they promise to be the most devoted and consistent, which is the more natural since their father is one of our most trusted champions.”