Frank Sunderline laughed.

"It's a good principle; because by it things settle themselves, in the long run. You may take mahogany or pine to make a table, and one will answer the common convenience of a table as well as the other; but you will learn not to take mahogany when the pine will serve the purpose. You will keep it for what the pine wouldn't be fit for; which wouldn't come to pa.s.s if the pine weren't cheapest. Women wouldn't get those places to tend counters and keep books, if the world hadn't found out that it was poor economy, as a general rule, to take men for it."

"But what do you say about mental power? About pay for teaching, for instance?" asked Ray.

"Why, you're coming round to _my_ side!" exclaimed Marion. "I should really like to know _where_ you are?"

"I am wherever I can get nearest to the truth of things," said Ray, smiling.

"That," said Sunderline, "is one of the specialties that is getting righted. Women _are_ being paid more, in proportion, for intellectual service, and the nearer you come to the pure mental power, the nearer you come to equality in recompense. A woman who writes a clever book, or paints a good picture, or sculptures a good statue, can get as much for her work as a man. But where _time_ is paid for,--where it is personal service,--the old principle at the root of things comes in. Men open up the wildernesses, men sail the seas, work the mines, forge the iron, build the cities, defend the nations while they grow, do the physical work of the world, _make way_ for all the finishings of education and opportunity that come afterward, and that put women where they are to-day. And men must be counted for such things. It is man's work that has made these women's platforms. They have the capital of strength, and capital draws interest. The right of the strongest isn't necessarily _oppression_ by the strongest. That's the way I look at it. And I think that what women lose in claim they gain in privilege."

"Only when women come to knock about the world without any claims, they don't seem to get much privilege," said Marion.

"I don't know. It seems rude to say so, perhaps, but they find a world ready made to knock round _in_, don't they? And it is because there's so much done that they couldn't have done themselves, that they find the chances waiting for them that they do. And the chances are multiplying with civilization, all the time. You see the question really goes back to first conditions, and lies upon the fact that first conditions may come back any day,--do come back, here and there, continually. Put man and woman together on the primitive earth, and it is the man that has got to subdue it; the woman is what Scripture calls her,--the helpmeet. And my notion is that if everything was right, a woman never should have to 'knock round alone.' It isn't the real order of Providence. I think Providence has been very much interfered with."

"There are widows," said Rachel, gently.

"Yes; and the 'fatherless and the widows' are everybody's charge to care for. I said--if things were right. I wish the energy was spent in bringing round the right that is used up in fitting things to the wrong."

"They say there are too many women in the world altogether!" said Marion, squarely.

"I guess not--for all the little children," said Frank Sunderline; and his tone sounded suddenly sweet and tender.

He was helping them out of the car, now, at the village station, and they went up the long steps to the street. All three walked on without more remark, for a little way. Then Marion broke out in her odd fashion,--

"Ray Ingraham! you've got a home and everything sure and comfortable. Just tell me what you'd do, if you were a widow and fatherless or anything, and n.o.body took you in charge."

"The thing I knew best, I suppose," said Rachel, quietly. "I think very likely I could be--a baker. But I'm certain of this much," she added lightly. "I never would make a brick loaf; that always seemed to me a man's perversion of the idea of bread."

A small boy was coming down the street toward them as she spoke, from the bake-shop door; a brick loaf sticking out at the two ends of an insufficient wrap of yellow brown paper under his arm.

As Ray glanced on beyond him, she caught sight of that which put the brick loaf, and their talk, instantly out of her mind. The doctor's chaise,--the horse fastened by the well-known strap and weight,--was standing before the house. She quickened her steps, without speaking.

"I say," called out the urchin at the same moment, looking up at her as he pa.s.sed by with a queer expression of mixed curiosity and knowing eagerness,--"Yer know yer father's sick? Fit--or sunthin'!"

But Ray made no sign--to anybody. She had already hurried in toward the side door, through the yard, under the elm.

A neighborly looking woman--such a woman as always "steps in" on an emergency--met her at the entrance. "He's dreadful sick, I'm afraid, dear," she said, reaching out and putting her hand on Ray's shoulder. "The doctor's up-stairs; ben there an hour. And I believe my soul every identical child in the village's ben sent in for a brick loaf."

Marion and Sunderline kept on down the Underhill road. The conversation was broken off. It was a startling occurrence that had interrupted it; but it does not need startling occurrences to turn aside the chance of talk just when one would have said something that one was most anxious to say. A very little straw will do it. It is like a game at croquet. The ball you want to hit lies close; but it is not quite your turn; a play intervenes; and before you can be allowed your strike the whole att.i.tude and aspect are changed.

Nothing lies where it did a minute before. You yourself are driven off, and forced into different combinations.

Marion wanted to try Sunderline with certain new notions--certain half-purposes of her own, in the latter part of this walk they would have together. Everything had led nicely up to it; when here, just at the moment of her opportunity, it became impossible to go on from where they were. An event had thrust itself in. It was not seemly to disregard it. They could not help thinking of the Ingrahams. And yet, "if it would have done," Marion Kent could have put off her sympathies, made her own little point, and then gone back to the sympathies again, just as really and truly, ten minutes afterward.

They would have kept. Why are things jostled up so?

"I am sorry for Ray," she said, presently.

Frank Sunderline, with a grave look, nodded his head thoughtfully, twice.

"If anything happens to Mr. Ingraham, won't it be strange that I should have asked her what I did, just that minute?"

"What? O, yes!"

It had fairly been jostled out of the young man's mind. They walked on silently again. But Marion could not give it up.

"I don't doubt she _would_ be a baker; carry on the whole concern,--if there was money. She keeps all her father's accounts, now."

"Does she?"

"She wouldn't have had the chance if there had been a boy. That's what I say isn't fair."

"I think you are mistaken. You can't change the way of the world.

There isn't anything to hinder a woman's doing work like that,--even going on with it, as you say,--when it is set for her by special circ.u.mstances. It's natural, and a duty; and the world will treat her well and think the more of her. Things are so that it is getting easier every day for it to be done. The facilities of the times can't help serving women as much as men. But people won't generally bring up their daughters to the work or the prospects that they do their sons, simply because they can't depend upon them in the same way afterwards. If a girl marries,--and she ought to if she can _right_,"--

"And what if she _has_ to, if she can, wrong?"

"Then she interferes with Providence again. She hasn't patience. She takes what wasn't meant for her, and she misses what was; whether it's work, or--somebody to work for her."

They were coming near Mrs. Kent's little white gate.

"I've a great mind to tell you," said Marion, "I don't have anybody to help me judge."

Sunderline was a little disconcerted. It is a difficult position for a young man to find himself in: that of suddenly elected confidant and judge concerning a young woman's personal affairs; unless, indeed, he be quite ready to seek and a.s.sume the permanent privilege. It is a hazardous appeal for a young woman to make. It may win or lose, strengthen or disturb, much.

"Your mother"--began Sunderline.

"O, mother doesn't see; she doesn't understand. How can she, living as she does? I could make her advise me to suit myself. She never goes about. The world has run ahead of her. She says I must conclude as I think best."

Sunderline was silent.

"I've a chance," said Marion, "if I will take it. A chance to do something that I like, something that I think I _could_ do. I can't stand the shops; there's a plenty of girls that are crazy for the places; let them have 'em. And I can't stay at home and iron lace curtains for other folks, or go round to rip up and make over other folks' old dirty carpets. I don't mean mother shall do it much longer. This is what I can do: I can get on to the lecture list, for reading and reciting. The Leverings,--you remember Virginia Levering, who gave a reading here last winter; her father was with her,--Hamilton Levering, the elocutionist? Well, I know them very well; I've got acquainted with them since; they say they'll help me, and put me forward. Mr. Levering will give me lessons and get me some evenings. He thinks I would do well. And next year they mean to go out West, and want me to go with them. Would you?"

Marion looked eagerly and anxiously in Sunderline's face as she asked the question. He could not help seeing that she cared what he might think. And on his part, he could not help caring a good deal what she might do. He did not like to see this girl, whom he had known and been friends with from childhood, spoilt. There was good, honest stuff in her, in spite of her second-rate vanities and half-bred ambitions. If she would only grow out of these, what a womanly woman she might be! That fair, grand-featured face of hers, what might it not come to hold and be beautiful with, if it could once let go its little airs and consciousnesses that cramped it? It had a finer look in it now than she thought of, as she waited with real ingenuous solicitude, his answer.

He gave it gravely and conscientiously.

"I don't think I have any business to advise. But I don't exactly believe in that sort of thing. It isn't a genuine trade."

"Why not? People like it. Virginia Levering makes fifty dollars a night, even when they have to hire a hall."

"And how often do the nights come? And how long is it likely to last?"

"Long enough to make money, I guess," said Marion, laughing. She was a little rea.s.sured at Sunderline's toleration of the idea, even so far as to make calm and definite objection. "And it's pleasant at the time. I like going about. I like to please people. I like to be somebody. It may be silly, but that's the truth."

"And what would you be afterward, when you had had your day? For none of these days last long, especially with women."

"O!" exclaimed Marion, with remonstrative astonishment. "Mrs.

Kemble! Charlotte Cushman!"