'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 again. It's rank mutiny, every word of it, for man has his duties and woman has hers, but they are as separate as their natures are. I suppose that we shall have a woman hoisting her pennant on the flagship presently, and taking command of the Channel Squadron.'
'Well, you have a woman on the throne taking command of the whole nation,' remarked his wife; 'and everybody is agreed that she does it better than any of the men.'
The Admiral was somewhat staggered by this home-thrust. 'That's quite another thing,' said he.
'You should come to their next meeting. I am to take the chair. I have just promised Mrs. Westmacott that I will do so. But it has turned chilly, and it is time that the girls were indoors. Good night! I shall look out for you after breakfast for our constitutional, Admiral.'
The old sailor looked after his friend with a twinkle in his eyes.
'How old is he, mother?'
'About fifty, I think.'
'And Mrs. Westmacott?'
'I heard that she was forty-three.'
The Admiral rubbed his hands, and shook with amusement. 'We'll find one of these days that three and two make one,' said he. I'll bet you a new bonnet on it, mother.
Chapter 4 – A Sister'S Secret
'Tell me, Miss Walker! You know how things should be. What would you say was a good profession for a young man of twenty-six who has had no education worth speaking about, and who is not very quick by nature?' The speaker was Charles Westmacott, and the time this same summer evening in the tennis ground, though the shadows had fallen now and the game been abandoned.
The girl glanced up at him, amused and surprised.
'Do you mean yourself?'
'Precisely.'
'But how could I tell?'
'I have no one to advise me. I believe that you could do it better than any one. I feel confidence in your opinion.'
'It is very flattering.' She glanced up again at his earnest, questioning face, with its Saxon eyes and drooping flaxen mustache, in some doubt as to whether he might be joking. On the contrary, all his attention seemed to be concentrated upon her answer.
'It depends so much upon what you can do, you know. I do not know you sufficiently to be able to say what natural gifts you have.' They were walking slowly across the lawn in the direction of the house.
'I have none. That is to say none worth mentioning. I have no memory and I am very slow.'
'But you are very strong.'
'Oh, if that goes for anything. I can put up a hundred-pound bar till further orders; but what sort of a calling is that?'
Some little joke about being called to the bar flickered up in Miss Walker's mind, but her companion was in such obvious earnest that she stifled down her inclination to laugh.
'I can do a mile on the cinder-track in 4:50 and across-country in 5:20, but how is that to help me? I might be a cricket professional, but it is not a very dignified position. Not that I care a straw about dignity, you know, but I should not like to hurt the old lady's feelings.
'Your aunt's?'
'Yes, my aunt's. My parents were killed in the Mutiny, you know, when I was a baby, and she has looked after me ever since. She has been very good to me. I'm sorry to leave her.'
'But why should you leave her?' They had reached the garden gate, and the girl leaned her racket upon the top of it, looking up with grave interest at her big white-flanneled companion.
'It's, Browning,' said he.
'What!'
'Don't tell my aunt that I said it'-he sank his voice to a whisper-'I hate Browning.'
Clara Walker rippled off into such a merry peal of laughter that he forgot the evil things which he had
