Chapter III

Man’s Real Attitude Toward the Progress of Woman

The Teacup club came to order with more than its usual reluctance at its next meeting and the president looked severe. “I wish you girls would stop talking about Helena and her affairs,” she said. “I detest gossip, and, besides, I want to hear all about her, too, and we can talk better after the meeting is over. The topic for to-day’s discussion will be, ‘Man’s Real Attitude Toward the Progress of Woman.’”

“I’m glad to hear it,” said the girl with the Roman nose. “Men are such queer creatures that by the time a girl gets to understand them really she is too old to attract their attention. Now, if we all put our heads together—”

“We may attain wisdom without its accompanying wrinkles,” broke in the girl with the dimple in her chin; “that is a good idea, for—”

“It is no real gain to know how to make them bring the proper kind of flowers and confectionery, if you have to spend the money thus saved on the beauty doctor; yes, that is true,” sighed the brown-eyed blonde.

“Widowers, or men who have been engaged several times, are often nice,” said the girl with the eyeglasses.

“Thank you,” said the girl with the dimple in her chin. “I like to do my own training, if it is troublesome. You can’t persuade a widower that his late wife was not a type of all womanhood, and that is horrid, especially if she happens to have had a taste for domestic magazines and molasses candy! That is why a widower is so much less attractive than a widow; she—”

“Has learned that men, save for a few leading traits, are all different,” said the girl with the classic profile. “Yes, matrimony always widens a woman’s views of the opposite sex, while it narrows those of a man.”

“Oh, dear,” said the girl with the Roman nose; “I do wish men would not do one thing and say another. Now, they are always praising domesticity in women, as well as shrinking modesty, and yet—”

“They always overlook the domestic kind of a girl when she does venture among people,” broke in the brown-eyed blonde. “I know it, and as for shyness and modesty, it is only the girl who is bold enough to call attention to those qualities in herself who receives a social reward for them.”

“Oh, well,” said the president, “a man with a couple of sisters learns a great deal about the sex.”

“Humph!” said the girl with the eyeglasses. “I don’t know why it is, but the more sisters a man has, the slower he is to enter into matrimony.”

“I’ve noticed that myself,” said the girl with the classic profile; “while girls who have plenty of brothers usually marry before they are twenty.”

“Pshaw! That is because the friends of their brothers get a chance to see them sew on buttons and make caramels,” said the girl with the Roman nose.

“No, it isn’t,” said the girl with the dimple in her chin, “it is because such a girl has more than one person to oppose the man who wants to marry her. But talk about masculine inconsistency! It sets me wild to hear men talk about domesticity and modesty and all that, and then hang about Kate, a girl who doesn’t know a frying pan from a—a camera, and who had as lief ask for a thing she wants as to hint for it—so unfeminine!”

“I know it,” said the girl with the eyeglasses. “Why, she never has to buy a flower, and as for candy, she has so much that she actually shares it with the other girls! I go to see her more frequently in Lent, because my conscience will not allow me to buy any then, and—”

“And Kate has been engaged six times; she told me so herself,” said the girl with the eyeglasses. “I declare, it is enough to make a girl—”

“H’m!” said the president. “Don’t forget, my dears, that while she has been engaged six times, she has not been married once!”

“Why—er—that is true,” cried the blue-eyed girl. “You dear, delightful, clever thing! I am so glad that I just made you be our president.”

“Oh, well, of course I like it dear; still, as somebody once said, I’d rather be right than president.”

“Hear, hear!” cried the girl with the Roman nose.

“Yes. But, oh, girls, Tom says that all the men in our set are talking about this club. He says that Jack Bittersweet asked him confidentially the other day if being intellectual made a woman less loveable. Luckily, I had just agreed to let him have a masculine dinner party and he assured Jack that it did not.”

The blue-eyed girl arose softly from her seat and going over to where the brown-eyed blonde was sitting, kissed her. “You dear thing,” she said. “Come over any day you like and you shall see the new sleeve design I got from Paris yesterday.”

The girl with the dimple in her chin exchanged glances with the girl with the eyeglasses.

“What time in the year do you prefer for a wedding?” asked the latter, apropos of nothing.

“Oh, speaking of weddings, that reminds me,” said the girl with the Roman nose. “I’d have prepared a paper on to-day’s topic, as you suggested, Evelyn, but Elizabeth asked me to help select her wedding dress and—well, you know, Elizabeth. It has taken her two days already and I don’t see any prospect yet of her making up her mind.”

“And yet she required only five minutes in which to decide to accept Fred, when he asked her to marry him,” said the president, thoughtfully.

“I know, dear, but then in this matter of selecting her dress, she had a choice,” said the brown-eyed blonde.

“And I’m sure that Elizabeth’s father is delighted to buy her a wedding dress,” said the girl with the eyeglasses. “Oh, Emily, pardon me—I quite forgot that Elizabeth is your cousin!”

“Never mind, dear, though I rather like her, in spite of the relationship. Oh, girls, you have no idea of what an effect this club is having upon me. Why, I’ve turned my den into a library, cut all the leaves of my Carlisle and coaxed papa to buy me a handsome writing desk and do up the walls in forest greens because pink and blue seemed so frivolous. Now, I can sit in that room and write papers for the club in real comfort.”

“You don’t know how pleased I am to hear it,” cried the president, warmly. “It is quite worth all the labor of selecting topics and leading the discussion, I assure you. Why, Marion, how late you are! Don’t you know that the really advanced woman is even ahead of the clock?”

“Yes, I do,” panted the girl with the classic profile, “but, really, I’ve had the most awful time getting here at all! You know I’m always in trouble, but really this is the worst that—I’ll never go anywhere with Nell again, unless it’s to my own funeral, and I can’t help myself, then.”

“What on earth has Nell done now?” queried the girl with the dimple in her chin, “don’t you know that you must not expect absolute sanity from an engaged girl? You said you were going with her to the south side to call upon some of the relatives of her affianced. Did she take you over there, and then discover that she didn’t know their exact address? Or did—”

“The address was not forgotten. We hadn’t meant to do any shopping to-day, but we stopped in to buy some thread, and really the new silks were so cheap that—”

“You arrived an hour late, and penniless! I know,” said the blue-eyed girl.

“N—ot quite. I had ten cents left when we started for home, and we had to take two lines of cars. Nell and I couldn’t get seats together—in fact, we were at opposite ends of the car. However, I paid her fare and signaled the fact to her, receiving a nod in reply.”

“Well?” said the president, “didn’t she want to pay your fare on the other line?”

“She—well, the fact is that she had misunderstood the signal, and paid our fare again with her own last dime. And there we were three miles from home, without a penny in our pockets—and the street car company had a dime it hadn’t earned. But then Nell never had a grain of sense—I should think by this time she knew that herself.”

“If she doesn’t, I’m sure you are not to blame, dear,” said the girl with the Roman nose. “However, for my part, I shall not blame you, even if you are as cross as a man who is wearing a frayed collar, for the rest of the afternoon.”

“But, don’t let us interrupt the proceedings,” said the girl with the classic profile, “just tell me what to-day’s topic is, and I—”

“Oh, it is a perfectly delightful one!” said the blue-eyed girl. “Man’s real attitude toward the Progress of Woman, and—”

“His real attitude is that of flight,” said the girl with the Roman nose, “he—”

“Don’t be flippant, dear, whatever you are,” said the president, gravely, “we have enough of that to endure from our masculine acquaintances. It seems to me that a man laughs at whatever he fails to understand, and then feels that he has replied to the argument.”

“Perhaps that is the reason that men laugh at so many jokes in which I can see nothing funny,” said the girl with the eyeglasses.

“No doubt of it,” said the brown-eyed blonde, “but, girls, never attempt to imitate them. I did once, and Annie—you know how obtuse she is—kept asking loudly what I was laughing at, and I couldn’t tell her. When a man had just made the remark that he was glad to find a girl with a keen sense of the ridiculous, too!”

“Just like Annie,” said the blue-eyed girl. “I sometimes wonder whether she is really obtuse or only malicious. You know how devoted Tommy Bonds is to music, don’t you? Well, Annie and I once accompanied him to a Thomas concert, and I wanted to make myself agreeable—”

“I hope you didn’t do it by conversing while the orchestra was playing,” said the president.

“Of course not, goosie. But I remembered that he always says a woman should be two things—sincere and fond of music. The soloist was a pianist, I can’t remember his name, but his hair was not at all remarkable. When he played an encore, Tommy leaned over to me, and said: ‘Isn’t it charming?’ and I replied, ‘Yes, I like it better every time I hear it; in fact, I often ask people to play it for me.’ I wish now that I hadn’t said that.”

“Why so?” asked the president, “it seems to me just the right thing to say.”

“But Annie leaned over asking, loudly, ‘What is the name of it?’ and, to my horror, Mr. Bonds said he didn’t know, and it was all so sudden that, to save my life, I couldn’t make up a name! In the silence which followed, some one in front of us was heard remarking that the encore was a composition by the pianist himself, and now played for the first time in public!”

“And it was all Annie’s fault, too,” said the girl with the dimple in her chin. “By the way, did I ever tell you how it happened that Mr. Bonds gave up calling me a delightful conversationalist? No? Well, you see, he lived almost opposite to us, and he practiced on the ’cello until papa, who is very fond of De Quincey, said he no longer dared to read “Murder considered as one of the Fine Arts.” Suddenly he stopped practicing, and—”

“Mercy on us, had anything happened to him?” gasped the president, turning pale.

“Nothing ever happens to people who deserve it. As it happened, however, we were no better off, for some one, a new resident of the street, we supposed, began to practice on the violin seven hours a day!”

“It may not have been a newcomer,” observed the girl with the eyeglasses. “It is a fact that one vigorous soprano is enough to demoralize a whole neighborhood, and I suppose—”

“The ’cello is quite as bad? Possibly so, at any rate rents went down in the neighborhood and placards went up. One day I happened to meet Mr. Bonds, and as long as my father was not within hearing distance, I said: ‘Oh, I’m sorry that you have given up your delightful ’cello.’ If you could have seen the rapture on his face.”

“I’d rather have seen his face than that of your guardian angel,” remarked the girl with the classic profile; “but go on; don’t stop.”

“I wish I had stopped then, but I didn’t. I said, ‘By the way, who is it that scrapes the violin all day long? I never heard anything so awful in my life!’ Oh, girls, I—”

“But I don’t see anything wrong in that,” said the president.

“He did. You see, he had given up the ’cello and taken to the violin with the idea of astonishing the world with his genius!”

“And you live to tell it,” said the girl with the Roman nose.

“M—yes—you see, everything has its compensation. When papa heard what I had done, he gave me a hundred dollars and his blessing.”

“What luck some people have,” said the brown-eyed blonde, “while others—oh, girls, I know something perfectly lovely, but I don’t know whether I ought to tell it to you or not. My conscience—”

“Why, Frances,” said the president, “I shall be awfully hurt if you don’t tell us now. When a girl speaks of her conscience in that way, it simply means that she distrusts her audience. You might know by this time, that we never tell anything which transpires at a meeting of this club.”

“Of course not,” said the girl with the dimple in her chin. “Why, Dick teased me vainly a whole evening to find out the line of argument advanced in favor of equal suffrage when we discussed ‘Woman in Politics’ the other day. The janitor must have told him the topic under discussion,” she added hastily.

“Very likely,” said the president. “What was that you wished to tell us, Frances, dear?”

“It was something that happened to Nell,” said the brown-eyed blonde. “Her fiancé had told her a great deal of his friend, Mr. Thynker, of Boston, who is to be his best man, and whom she had never seen. He appeared suddenly at Mr. Dickenharry’s office the other day, just as the latter was starting for Milwaukee, and there was barely time for him to make arrangements with Mr. Thynker to call on Nell the following afternoon. As it happened, he knew the Vansmiths, and was asked to the luncheon they gave that day, and seated immediately opposite to Nell. Of course he didn’t catch her name when they were introduced, and there was no chance for explanations. Oh, girls, I wonder if I really ought to finish this?”

“If you don’t, I shall ask Nell why you didn’t,” said the president.

“Well, during a lull in the conversation, he leaned forward and, in loud, clear tones, asked Nell what kind of a girl his friend Tom Dickenharry had got himself engaged to _this_ time!”

“M’hm,” said the president, after the laughter had subsided a little, “that settles one matter in advance, anyhow. It is easy to know upon whose side the victory will rest when they have their first quarrel after marriage.”

“There is one question I would like to ask the members of this club,” said the girl with the eyeglasses, “and it is one which nearly disrupted our little Shakespeare club: If you really want to please a man—any man—what is the best way to go about it?”

“That is really such a simple question that there is only one answer possible,” said the girl with the dimple in her chin.

“And that is—”

“Be born rich.”

“But, suppose you have neglected that qualification,” persisted the girl with the eyeglasses.

“Learn to cook; but never let him taste the result of your cookery,” said the blue-eyed girl.

“Yes—or wear his college colors,” said the girl with the classic profile.

“Let him do all the talking,” said the brown-eyed blonde.

“Praise the shape of his head—no matter what it may be,” said the president. “I wouldn’t tell anybody that,” she added, reflectively, “only that two fortune tellers and a palmist have assured me that my husband will outlive me.”

“Mr. Bonds has a very well-shaped head,” observed the girl with the eyeglasses, “a little long perhaps, but—”

“The rotundity of his pocketbook over-balances that,” broke in the girl with the dimple in her chin.

“Clarissa says he is generous, too—a rare quality in a really wealthy man,” said the blue-eyed girl.

“M—I don’t know about his generosity,” said the president. “A marriage license is about as inexpensive a thing as a man can buy, and yet he has displayed no desire to invest in one.”

“Oh, pshaw, that makes no difference,” said the girl with the Roman nose, “lots of girls nowadays don’t intend to marry, anyhow, so—”

“I wonder why they never think to mention the fact publicly until after they are thirty,” mused the girl with the dimple in her chin; “oh, girls, shouldn’t you like really to do something wonderful?”

“I once wore a pair of common-sense shoes a whole month,” said the blue-eyed girl, modestly.

“H’m; who was the Englishman?” asked the brown-eyed blonde, “the one with whom you used to walk at that time, I mean,” she added, pleasantly.

“It was the spring that Mr. Penny-Lesse was here, but I don’t see what that had to do with it,” said the blue-eyed girl, with great dignity.

“Nothing at all of course,” said the brown-eyed blonde, “I only—”

“You did not meet him, I believe; he was very particular about the people to whom he was introduced,” said the girl with the dimple in her chin, sweetly. “I did rather an unusual thing myself once—I had five dollars in my pocketbook when my allowance came due!”

“Yes, but you had left the pocketbook at my house ten days before, and thought it was lost,” said the girl with the classic profile, “don’t you remember, I only brought it over after the shops were closed the evening before?”

“Oh, girls,” said the president, “I’ve recently met a woman who has traveled all through Asia, and—”

“I suppose she did it in bloomers and one of those horrid, unbecoming, stiff caps, too,” broke in the brown-eyed blonde. “Well, all I’ve got to say is that a woman who has the courage to make such a guy of herself, is brave enough to face all the tigers and mountain lions, and—er—boa constrictors in Asia.”

“I don’t believe there are any boa constrictors and mountain lions in Asia,” said the girl with the Roman nose. “As for tigers—”

“Mercy, how literal you are!” pettishly replied the brown-eyed blonde. “Well, buffalos then; how will that suit you? I’m equally afraid of all of them, myself.”

“Oh, girls,” cried the girl with the dimple in her chin, “Marion and I have just had such fun. We have been telling each other the most awful things that ever happened to us in our lives.”

“Perhaps that is what made you late, too,” remarked the president, in a severe tone.

“N-not exactly. You see, I knew there was something wrong about my watch, and I could not remember whether it was thirteen minutes fast or thirteen minutes slow, so—”

“But do tell us what was the most awful thing that ever happened to you, Evelyn,” cried the girl with the classic profile. “The very worst thing that ever befell me was connected with a timepiece. It was last summer, and a man who—who had been very nice to me was going away early the next morning. Men were scarce at the seashore, as you know, and when a lot of the girls saw us sitting on the porch they came over and spent the evening with us. We just could not get a chance for a word alone.”

“I know—I know,” groaned the girl with the dimple in her chin.

“Yes. Well, his train was to go at 5:16 A.M., and he asked me in the most meaning tone if I cared sufficiently to hear something he had to say to get up early enough to see him off. I—I said I did.”

“Well?” said the girl with the Roman nose.

“I set my watch by the hall clock in order to be sure of getting up in time; then I lay awake nearly all night so I would not oversleep myself. When I reached the station it was five minutes past six.”

“Watch stopped?” asked the girl with the eyeglasses.

“No; Harry had run down to spend that evening with Kate, and she had set the clock back. The man was married in October to one of the girls who had risen in time to see him off.”

“Of course,” said the president. “Speaking of awful things—you all know how afraid I am of fire.”

“We do,” said the girl with the Roman nose. “I believe you could smell a burning match a block away.”

“Well, the other day our fire insurance ran out, and Tom handed me the money and asked me to go down and renew it, as he was very busy. I forgot all about it until night; then I lay awake sniffing smoke until Tom thought I had influenza again. Next morning I got ready to go and attend to it at once. I wanted to look nice, too, because one of the men in that office once told Tom that he had an awfully pretty wife.”

“How much money did he borrow from Tom that time?” asked the girl with the dimple in her chin.

“I was curling my hair,” went on the president, unheeding, “when I smelled fire. I ran wildly all through the house, with a curl still wrapped about the iron, trying to locate it!”

“And did you find any?” asked the brown-eyed blonde.

“Yes; my own hair was burning,” said the president, with a groan.

“How awful!” said the girl with the eyeglasses. “That reminds me of what once happened to me. It was when I was wearing a single curl in the middle of my forehead. One day Frank was there, and he—he would twist it over his finger and quote poetry about it until he took all the curl out of it. Of course I discovered that I had no handkerchief and went up to get one.”

“I don’t see anything so awful in that,” said the girl with the classic profile.

“No, dear; but while I was curling it I dropped the hot iron down my back, and dared not even scream lest he find out what I was doing.”

“The worst thing that ever happened to me,” said the girl with the dimple in her chin, “was in connection with Lewis. As soon as it was settled, I went to tell Emmeline, so she would give up trying to get him. I said I was his first love, and she couldn’t imagine how jealous he was. ‘Oh, yes, dear, I can,’ said she; ‘he was always so when he was engaged to me!’”

“I wondered why you broke with him,” said the president. “Well, we must adjourn now, and I must say that I have never heard a subject more logically discussed than the one to-day!”