The Crux | Page 8

effect. She wore it in smooth plaits wound like a wreath from; brow to nape.
After an understanding silence and a walk past three gates and back again, Vivian answered her.
"I wish I were in your shoes," she said.
"What do you mean having the Doctor in the house?"
"No I'd like that too; but I mean work to do your position."
"Oh, the library! You needn't; it's horrid. I wish I were in your shoes, and had a father and mother to take care of me. I can tell you, it's no fun having to be there just on time or get fined, and having to poke away all day with those phooty old ladies and tiresome children."
"But you're independent."
"Oh, yes, I'm independent. I have to be. Aunt Rella could take care of me, I suppose, but of course I wouldn't let her. And I dare say library work is better than schoolteaching."
"What'll we be doing when we're forty, I wonder?" said Vivian, after another turn.
"Forty! Why I expect to be a grandma by that time," said Sue. She was but twenty-one, and forty looked a long way off to her.
"A grandma! And knit?" suggested Vivian.
"Oh, yes baby jackets and blankets and socks and little shawls. I love to knit," said Sue, cheerfully.
"But suppose you don't marry?" pursued her friend.
"Oh, but I shall marry you see if I don't. Marriage" here she carefully went inside the gate and latched it "marriage is a woman's duty!" And she ran up the path laughing.
Vivian laughed too, rather grimly, and slowly walked towards her own door.
The little sitting-room was hot, very hot; but Mr. Lane sat with his carpet-slippered feet on its narrow hearth with a shawl around him. "Shut the door, Vivian!" he exclaimed irritably. "I'll never get over this cold if such draughts are let in on me."
"Why, it's not cold out, Father and it's very close in here."
Mrs. Lane looked up from her darning. "You think it's close because you've come in from outdoors. Sit down and don't fret your father; I'm real worried about him."
Mr. Lane coughed hollowly. He had become a little dry old man with gray, glassy eyes, and had been having colds in this fashion ever since Vivian could remember.
"Dr. Bellair says that the out-door air is the best medicine for a cold," remarked Vivian, as she took off her things.
"Dr. Bellair has not been consulted in this case," her father returned wheezingly. "I'm quite satisfied with my family physician. He's a man, at any rate."
"Save me from these women doctors!" evclaimed his wife.
Vivian set her lips patiently. She had long since learned how widely she differed from both father and mother, and preferred silence to dispute.
Mr. Lane was a plain, ordinary person, who spent most of a moderately useful life in the shoe business, from which he had of late withdrawn. Both he and his wife "had property" to a certain extent; and now lived peacefully on their income with neither fear nor hope, ambition nor responsibility to trouble them. The one thing they were yet anxious about was to see Vivian married, but this wish seemed to be no nearer to fulfillment for the passing years.
"I don't know what the women are thinking of, these days," went on the old gentleman, putting another shovelful of coal on the fire with a careful hand. "Doctors and lawyers and even ministers, some of 'em! The Lord certainly set down a woman's duty pretty plain she was to cleave unto her husband!"
"Some women have no husbands to cleave to, Father."
"They'd have husbands fast enough if they'd behave themselves," he answered. "No man's going to want to marry one of these self-sufficient independent, professional women, of course."
"I do hope, Viva," said her mother, "that you're not letting that Dr. Bellair put foolish ideas into your head."
"I want to do something to support myself sometime, Mother. I can't live on my parents forever."
"You be patient, child. There's money enough for you to live on. It's a woman's place to wait," put in Mr. Lane.
"How long?" inquired Vivian. "I'm twenty-five. No man has asked me to marry him yet. Some of the women in this town have waited thirty forty fifty sixty years. No one has asked them."
"I was married at sixteen," suddenly remarked Vivian's grandmother. "And my mother wasn't but fifteen. Huh!" A sudden little derisive noise she made; such as used to be written "humph!"
For the past five years, Mrs. Pettigrew had made her home with the Lanes. Mrs. Lane herself was but a feeble replica of her energetic parent. There was but seventeen years difference in their ages, and comparative idleness with some ill-health on the part of the daughter, had made the difference appear less.
Mrs. Pettigrew had but a poor opinion of the present generation. In her active youth