The Second Generation | Page 8

who lacked it. But it ruffled her to hear him call the home folks jays--just as it would have ruffled him had she been the one to make the slighting remark. "If you invite people's opinion," said she, "you've no right to sneer at them because they don't say what you wanted."
"But _I_'m not driving for show if you are," he retorted, with a testiness that was confession.
"Don't be silly," was her answer. "You know you wouldn't take all this trouble on a desert island."
"Of course not," he admitted, "but I don't care for the opinion of any but those capable of appreciating."
"And those capable of appreciating are only those who approve," teased Adelaide. "Why drive tandem among these 'jays?'"
"To keep my hand in," replied he; and his adroit escape restored his good humor.
"I wish I were as free from vanity as you are, Arthur, dear," said she.
"You're just as fond of making a sensation as I am," replied he. "And, my eye, Del! but you do know how." This with an admiring glance at her most becoming hat with its great, gracefully draped chiffon veil, and at her dazzling white dust-coat with its deep blue facings that matched her eyes.
She laughed. "Just wait till you see my new dresses--and hats."
"Another shock for your poor father."
"Shock of joy."
"Yes," assented Arthur, rather glumly; "he'll take anything off you. But when I--"
"It's no compliment to me," she cut in, the prompter to admit the truth because it would make him feel better. "He thinks I'm 'only a woman,' fit for nothing but to look pretty as long as I'm a girl, and then to devote myself to a husband and children, without any life or even ideas of my own."
"Mother always seems cheerful enough," said Arthur. His content with the changed conditions which the prosperity and easy-going generosity of the elder generation were making for the younger generation ended at his own sex. The new woman--idle and frivolous, ignorant of all useful things, fit only for the show side of life and caring only for it, discontented with everybody but her own selfish self--Arthur had a reputation among his friends for his gloomy view of the American woman and for his courage in expressing it.
"You are so narrow-minded, Artie!" his sister exclaimed impatiently. "Mother was brought up very differently from the way she and father have brought me up--"
"Have let you bring yourself up."
"No matter; I am different."
"But what would you do? What can a woman do?"
"I don't know," she admitted. "But I do know I hate a humdrum life." There was the glint of the Ranger will in her eyes as she added: "Furthermore, I shan't stand for it."
He looked at her enviously. "You'll be free in another year," he said. "You and Ross Whitney will marry, and you'll have a big house in Chicago and can do what you please and go where you please."
"Not if Ross should turn out to be the sort of man you are."
He laughed. "I can see Ross--or any man--trying to manage _you_! You've got too much of father in you."
"But I'll be dependent until--" Adelaide paused, then added a satisfactorily vague, "for a long time. Father won't give me anything. How furious he'd be at the very suggestion of dowry. Parents out here don't appreciate that conditions have changed and that it's necessary nowadays for a woman to be independent of her husband."
Arthur compressed his lips, to help him refrain from comment. But he felt so strongly on the subject that he couldn't let her remarks pass unchallenged. "I don't know about that, Del," he said. "It depends on the woman. Personally, I'd hate to be married to a woman I couldn't control if necessary."
"You ought to be ashamed of yourself," cried Del, indignant. "Is that your idea of control--to make a woman mercenary and hypocritical? You'd better change your way of thinking if you don't want Janet to be very unhappy, and yourself, too."
"That sounds well," he retorted, "but you know better. Take our case, for instance. Is it altogether love and affection that make us so cautious about offending father?"
"Speak for yourself," said Adelaide. "_I'm_ not cautious."
"Do try to argue fair, even if you are a woman. You're as cautious in your way as I am in mine."
Adelaide felt that he was offended, and justly. "I didn't mean quite what I said, Artie. You are cautious, in a way, and sometimes. But often you're reckless. I'm frightened every once in a while by it, and I'm haunted by the dread that there'll be a collision between father and you. You're so much alike, and you understand each other less and less, all the time."
After a silence Arthur said, thoughtfully: "I think I understand him. There are two distinct persons inside of me.