Part 98 (1/2)

It was an embarra.s.sing position for the gentleman.

He had expected to find a helpless cowering girl; afraid to cry out because her case would be lost if she did; begging piteously that he would leave her; wholly at his mercy.

What he did find was so inexplicable as to reduce him to gibbering astonishment. There stood his imposing grandmother, so overwhelmed with amazement that her trenchant sentences failed her completely; his stepmother, wearing an expression that almost suggested delight in his discomfiture; and Diantha, as grim as Rhadamanthus.

Poor little Ilda burst into wild sobs and choking explanations, clinging to Diantha's hand. ”If I'd only listened to you!” she said. ”You told me he was bad! I never thought he'd do such an awful thing!”

Young Mathew fumbled at the door. He had locked it outside in his efforts with the pa.s.s-key. He was red, red to his ears--very red, but there was no escape. He faced them--there was no good in facing the door.

They all stood aside and let him pa.s.s--a wordless gauntlet.

Diantha took the weeping Ilda to her room for the night. Madam Weatherstone and Mrs. Weatherstone went down together.

”She must have encouraged him!” the older lady finally burst forth.

”She did not encourage him to enter her room, as you saw and heard,”

said Viva with repressed intensity.

”He's only a boy!” said his grandmother.

”She is only a child, a helpless child, a foreigner, away from home, untaught, unprotected,” Viva answered swiftly; adding with quiet sarcasm--”Save for the shelter of the home!”

They parted in silence.

WE EAT AT HOME

RONDEAU

We eat at home; we do not care Of what insanitary fare; So long as Mother makes the pie, Content we live, content we die, And proudly our dyspepsia bear.

Straight from our furred forefather's lair The instinct comes of feeding there; And still unmoved by progress high We eat at home.

In wasteful ignorance we buy Alone; alone our food we fry; What though a tenfold cost we bear, The doctor's bill, the dentist's chair?

Still without ever asking why We eat at home.

OUR ANDROCENTRIC CULTURE; or, THE MAN-MADE WORLD

IX.

”SOCIETY” AND ”FAs.h.i.+ON”

Among our many naive misbeliefs is the current fallacy that ”society” is made by women; and that women are responsible for that peculiar social manifestation called ”fas.h.i.+on.”

Men and women alike accept this notion; the serious essayist and philosopher, as well as the novelist and paragrapher, reflect it in their pages. The force of inertia acts in the domain of psychics as well as physics; any idea pushed into the popular mind with considerable force will keep on going until some opposing force--or the slow resistance of friction--stops it at last.

”Society” consists mostly of women. Women carry on most of its processes, therefore women are its makers and masters, they are responsible for it, that is the general belief.