Part 16 (1/2)

”Will you put that down, please,” requested Tom.

”Certainly,” Ruth smiled over-obligingly and laid the paper-cutter on the table. She folded her arms and began tapping the rug with her toe.

She was almost insolent.

”Well, then--what are your plans?” fired Tom at her with an obvious effort to control himself.

”New York,” she announced mysteriously.

”Oh, New York!” repeated Tom. It was a scornful voice. ”New York! And what do you intend to do in New York?”

”Oh, I don't know. I haven't decided. Something,” she said airily.

”Ruth,” said Tom, ”please listen to me carefully if you can for a minute. We've always given you a pretty loose rein. Haven't we?”

Ruth shrugged her shoulders.

”You've had every advantage; attended one of the most expensive schools in this country; had all the money you required, coming-out party and all that; pleasures, flattery, attention--everything to make a girl contented. You've visited any one you pleased from one end of the United States to the other; traveled in Europe, Florida--anywhere you wanted; come and gone at will. Nothing to handicap you. Nothing hard. Nothing difficult. You'll agree. And what have you done with your advantages?

_What_--I want to know?”

Ruth shrugged her shoulders again.

”You can't blame any one but yourself. You haven't been interfered with.

I believed in letting you run your own affairs. Thought you were made of the right stuff to do it creditably. I was mistaken. You've had a fair trial at your own management and you've failed to show satisfactory results. Now _I'm_ going to step in. _I'm_ going to see if _I_ can save you from this drifting about and getting nowhere. I don't ask you to go back and anchor with Robert Jennings again. I'm shocked to confess that I don't believe you're worthy of a man like Jennings. It is no small thing to be decided carelessly or frivolously--this matter of marriage.

Engaged to two men inside of one year, and now both affairs broken off.

It's disgraceful! You've got to learn somehow or other that although you are a woman, you're not especially privileged to go back on decisions.”

”I don't want to be especially privileged,” said Ruth, and then she added, ”special privileges would not be expected by women, if they were given equal rights.”

”Oh, Suffrage!!!” exclaimed Tom with three exclamation points. ”So that's it! That's at the bottom of all this trouble.”

”That's at the bottom of it,” suddenly put in my husband, emphatically.

”Oh, I see. Well, first, Ruth, you're to drop all that nonsense.

Suffrage indeed! What do _you_ know about it? You ought to be married and taking care of your own babies, and you wouldn't be disturbed by all these crazy-headed fads, invented by dissatisfied and unoccupied females. Suffrage! And perhaps you think that this latest exhibition of your changeableness and vacillation is an argument in favor of it.”

”You needn't throw women's vacillation in their faces, Tom,” replied Ruth calmly. ”Stable decisions are matters of training and education.

Girls of my acquaintance lack the experience with the business world.

They don't come in contact with big transactions. They're guarded from them. A lawyer does the thinking for a woman of property oftentimes, and so, of course, women do not learn the necessity of precise statements, accurate thought, and all that. From the time a girl is old enough to think she knows she is just a girl, who her family hope will grow up to be pretty and attractive and marry well. If her family believed she was to grow up into a responsible citizen who would later control by her vote all sorts of weighty questions that affect taxes and tariffs and things, they would have to devote more thought to making her intelligent, because it would have an effect upon their individual interests. I'm interested in suffrage, Tom, not for the good it is going to do politics, but for the good it's going to do women.”

Tom made an exclamation of disgust. He was beside himself with scorn and disapproval.

”Nonsense! Utter rot! Women were made to marry and be mothers. Women were----”

”But we'd be better mothers,” Ruth cut in. ”Don't you see, if----”

”Oh, I don't want to discuss suffrage,” interrupted Tom; ”I want to discuss your life. Let's keep to the subject. I want to see you settled and happy some day, and as I'm so much older than you, you must put yourself into my hands, and cheerfully. First, drop suffrage. Drop it.

Good Lord, Ruth, don't be a faddist. Then I want you to lay your decision about Jennings on the shelf. Let it rest for a while. Postpone the wedding if you wish----”

”But, Tom,” tucked in Edith, ”that's impossible. The invitations----”