Beyond the City | Page 9

What a clipper she was! She could sail two
points nearer the wind than anything of her tonnage in the service. You
remember her, mother. You saw her come into Plymouth Bay. Wasn't
she a beauty?"
"She was indeed, dear. But when I say that I think that Harold is not
happy I mean in his daily life. Has it never struck you how thoughtful,
he is at times, and how absent-minded?"
"In love perhaps, the young dog. He seems to have found snug
moorings now at any rate."
"I think that it is very likely that you are right, Willy," answered the
mother seriously. "But with which of them?"
"I cannot tell."
"Well, they are very charming girls, both of them. But as long as he
hangs in the wind between the two it cannot be serious. After all, the
boy is four-and-twenty, and he made five hundred pounds last year. He
is better able to marry than I was when I was lieutenant."
"I think that we can see which it is now," remarked the observant
mother. Charles Westmacott had ceased to knock the tennis balls about,
and was chatting with Clara Walker, while Ida and Harold Denver were

still talking by the railing with little outbursts of laughter. Presently a
fresh set was formed, and Doctor Walker, the odd man out, came
through the wicket gate and strolled up the garden walk.
"Good evening, Mrs. Hay Denver," said he, raising his broad straw hat.
"May I come in?"
"Good evening, Doctor! Pray do!"
"Try one of these," said the Admiral, holding out his cigar-case. "They
are not bad. I got them on the Mosquito Coast. I was thinking of
signaling to you, but you seemed so very happy out there."
"Mrs. Westmacott is a very clever woman," said the Doctor, lighting
the cigar. "By the way, you spoke about the Mosquito Coast just now.
Did you see much of the Hyla when you were out there?"
"No such name on the list," answered the seaman, with decision.
"There's the Hydra, a harbor defense turret-ship, but she never leaves
the home waters."
The Doctor laughed. "We live in two separate worlds," said he. "The
Hyla is the little green tree frog, and Beale has founded some of his
views on protoplasm upon the appearancer, of its nerve cells. It is a
subject in which I take an interest."
"There were vermin of all sorts in the woods. When I have been on
river service I have heard it at night like the engine-room when you are
on the measured mile. You can't sleep for the piping, and croaking, and
chirping. Great Scott! what a woman that is! She was across the lawn in
three jumps. She would have made a captain of the foretop in the old
days."
"She is a very remarkable woman."
"A very cranky one."
"A very sensible one in some things," remarked Mrs. Hay Denver.

"Look at that now!" cried the Admiral, with a lunge of his forefinger at
the Doctor. "You mark my words, Walker, if we don't look out that
woman will raise a mutiny with her preaching. Here's my wife
disaffected already, and your girls will be no better. We must combine,
man, or there's an end of all discipline."
"No doubt she is a little excessive in her views." said the Doctor, "but
in the main I think as she does."
"Bravo, Doctor!" cried the lady.
"What, turned traitor to your sex! We'll court-martial you as a deserter."
"She is quite right. The professions are not sufficiently open to women.
They are still far too much circumscribed in their employments. They
are a feeble folk, the women who have to work for their bread-- poor,
unorganized, timid, taking as a favor what they might demand as a right.
That is why their case is not more constantly before the public, for if
their cry for redress was as great as their grievance it would fill the
world to the exclusion of all others. It is all very well for us to be
courteous to the rich, the refined, those to whom life is already made
easy. It is a mere form, a trick of manner. If we are truly courteous, we
shall stoop to lift up struggling womanhood when she really needs our
help--when it is life and death to her whether she has it or not. And then
to cant about it being unwomanly to work in the higher professions. It
is womanly enough to starve, but unwomanly to use the brains which
God has given them. Is it not a monstrous contention?"
The Admiral chuckled. "You are like one of these phonographs,
Walker," said he; "you have had all this talked into you, and now you
are reeling it off