word woman, sir, uttered with the half-hidden sneer
which always accompanies its expression from the mouth of a man."
"Sneer, Miss Petrie!"
"I quite allow that it is involuntary, and not analysed or understood
by yourselves. If you speak of a dog, you intend to do so with
affection, but there is always contempt mixed with it. The so-called
chivalry of man to woman is all begotten in the same spirit. I want
no favour, but I claim to be your equal."
"I thought that American ladies were generally somewhat exacting as
to those privileges which chivalry gives them."
"It is true, sir, that the only rank we know in our country is in
that precedence which man gives to woman. Whether we maintain that,
or whether we abandon it, we do not intend to purchase it at the
price of an acknowledgment of intellectual inferiority. For myself, I
hate chivalry;--what you call chivalry. I can carry my own chair, and
I claim the right to carry it whithersoever I may please."
Mr. Glascock remained with her for some time, but made no opportunity
for giving that invitation to Monkhams of which Caroline had spoken.
As he said afterwards, he found it impossible to expect her to attend
to any subject so trivial; and when, afterwards, Caroline told him,
with some slight mirth,--the capability of which on such a subject
was coming to her with her new ideas of life,--that, though he was
partly saved as a man and a brother, still he was partly the reverse
as a feudal lord, he began to reflect that Wallachia Petrie would be
a guest with whom he would find it very difficult to make things go
pleasant at Monkhams. "Does she not bully you horribly?" he asked.
"Of course she bullies me," Caroline answered; "and I cannot expect
you to understand as yet how it is that I love her and like her; but
I do. If I were in distress to-morrow, she would give everything she
has in the world to put me right."
"So would I," said he.
"Ah, you;--that is a matter of course. That is your business now.
And she would give everything she has in the world to set the world
right. Would you do that?"
"It would depend on the amount of my faith. If I could believe in the
result, I suppose I should do it."
"She would do it on the slightest hope that such giving would have
any tendency that way. Her philanthropy is all real. Of course she is
a bore to you."
"I am very patient."
"I hope I shall find you so,--always. And, of course, she is
ridiculous--in your
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