The girl looked into the fire and spoke very carefully. “I don't think that I oughtn't to know the things that are going on.”
The bishop studied her face for an instant. It struck him that they had reached something very fundamental as between parent and child. His modernity showed itself in the temperance of his reply.
“Don't you think, my dear, that on the whole your mother and I, who have lived longer and know more, are more likely to know when it is best that you should begin to know--this or that?”
The girl knitted her brows and seemed to be reading her answer out of the depths of the coals. She was on the verge of speaking, altered her mind and tried a different beginning.
“I think that every one must do their thinking--his thinking--for--oneself,” she said awkwardly.
“It isn't trusting. But one knows best for oneself when one is hungry.”
“I want to find out for myself what all this trouble about votes and things means.”
“You know I don't think that. But you are busy....”
“Aren't you being perhaps a little impatient, Eleanor? After all--you are barely eighteen.... We have given you all sorts of liberties.”
Her silence admitted it. “But still,” she said after a long pause, “there are other girls, younger than I am, in these things. They talk about--oh, all sorts of things. Freely....”
“You've been awfully good to me,” she said irrelevantly. “And of course this meeting was all pure accident.”
Father and daughter remained silent for awhile, seeking a better grip.
“What exactly do you want, Eleanor?” he asked.
She looked up at him. “Generally?” she asked.
“Your mother has the impression that you are discontented.”
She remained still for a time. She felt the moment had come to make her demand.
“I would like to go to Newnham or Somerville--and work. I feel--so horribly ignorant. Of all sorts of things. If I were a son I should go--”
He had gone rather far in the direction of the Woman Suffrage people; he had advocated equality of standard in all sorts of matters, and the memory of these utterances hampered him.
“If I were a son, you wouldn't say that.”
His reply was vague. “But in this home,” he said, “we have a certain atmosphere.”
He left her to imply her differences in sensibility and response from the hardier male.