If the Baker Institute of Medical Experiment is not a respectable place you should make John resign as trustee.
John is trustee of--oh, nearly everything. That makes it all the worse. It isn't as if you had to work.
Oh, but John is so rich now, his credit can stand it. And you oughtn't to mind! Why, some of our most fashionable families now contain freaks like me. It's becoming quite smart, just as in former days one of the sons would go into the Church or the navy.
Well, of course, I am old-fashioned, but going down-town every day with the men,--it seems so unwomanly.
But wasn't I womanly for years? Instead of going down-town and working with highbrows, I stayed up-town and played with lowbrows--until I was bored to death.
Yes, that's what comes of going to college, leaving the home, getting these new ideas. All the same, Helen, the men, really nice men, don't like it.
Well, you see, I don't like really nice men, so that makes it agreeable all around.
If it were only art or music or something feminine, but that awful laboratory! How can a lady poison poor, innocent little monkeys?
If I were a lady I'd _dine_ with monkeys.... Do you know what the word means, Lucy? In Anglo-Saxon times "lady" meant "one who gives loaves"; now, one who _takes_ a loaf.
Very clever, my dear, but some day you'll be sorry. No man, Helen, likes a woman to have independent views.
Helen can afford to have independent views; she has an independent income--she earns it.
Independent income! Her salary wouldn't pay for your hats.
All the same, I wish I had gone to college; I wish I had learned a profession.
What have these New Women accomplished? Just one thing: they are destroying chivalry!
Not entirely, Lucy, not entirely. For instance, I am the best assistant Ernest Hamilton has, but the worst paid; the others are all men. Hurray for chivalry!
Well, I'm just an old-fashioned wife. Woman's sphere is the home. My husband says so.
But suppose you haven't any husband! What can a spinster do in the home?
_Stay_ in it--till she gets one! That's what the old-fashioned spinster used to do.
At any rate, the old-fashioned spinster did not stay out of her home all night and get herself compromised, talked about, sent abroad! Or, if she did, she knew enough to remain abroad until the gossip blew over.