Angela's Business

lock. Big Bill pointed to but five minutes of eleven. Good! There remained a clean hour

and had been to college and law-school. It was worn and stained, but still strong, and bore up, besides the lamp and clock, not only a large array of writer's paraphernalia, but a considerable floating miscellany, too, including a clipping or so, several unanswered letters, a stray tobacc

s the author of them sat in stillness, conning over the lines that followed: the magnanimou

en he would have the "Post" reprint it; finally he would induce all the local papers to print glowing editorials demanding, "Is this prophetess to be without honor in her own country?" Unquestionably a most helpful plan; but characteristically, Mary had not waited for it. By some "pull" she had, she had put her little matter through months ahead of sc

forgotten words wit

ed the whole State on the issue of principle thus thrown down: Did a woman have the right to study, or not? She stormed the courts for an injunction, she set the legislature by the ears for a special act. The story of her personal interview with the Gover

rt about the National League for Education Reform. Having recounted how the bequest of Rufus B. Zecker's mill

not learning at all, but purely the process of fitting the individual for effectual relations with his (or her) environment. With the League's propaganda to that end, under the

e would better have written. And

h the hope that before long she might go back to New York, to stay there the rest of her life. For on that journey she had abruptly learned that the League directors had their eyes upon her with reference to their General Secretaryship, which was to become vacant next March. Undoubtedly, the brilliant Dr. Ames had sounded her prett

ter the day's secretarial labor, Judge Blenso slept well. Charles ro

had long embodied the best of the whole Movement for him. He had held her up, in season and out, as a perfect example of the New Woman at her best. And Mary Wing was that, he declared it now; the real thing, as different as possible from the hollow shams of the Redmantle Club. Of course-of course-she had

rth, in the most pleasing, unconscious way, that very type which all Redmantlers so derided; but further, she had artlessly used a phrase which, to his authoritative mind, had helped to scientize her case at a bound. For of course the most scientif

And when had this other doctrine grown so strong and sure, that the Business of Maki

ood stroking the bridge of his nose, somewhat worriedly.

e already called it, albeit it was his only one, and he and Judge Blenso had completed it but two weeks ago, to a day. This novel, in manuscript, was now in the hands of t

as precisely the reason that he, the author, felt this sense of moral responsibility. Young married women, young impressionable Temporary Spinsters everywhere, would soon be reading this book, and moulding their characters upon it. He, of course, had never preached any of the wilder, Trevenna Modernity. But all the same.... That passage there, for instance, where Lily Slender, in the lonely vigil on the terrace, reviews the status of Parasitic Woman and decides to leave her husband, and grow her Soul:

it in, in those days, how serious Mary was as to-what was the word of that mad

ring Egoism had anything more valuable to give the world than the old virtues which it flouted? Beauty, charm, and cheer, tenderness, selfless sympathy, all that mot

o fix his point of view, straighten out his "moral plot," by means of notes in the old French exercise-book. Long as he had sensed a certain spiritual starkness in his first novel, long as he had looked forward to his second, the vital questions concerning his new "line" had never yet been settled in his m

pidly grew more and more interesting. Unfortunately, before it could be developed in even the s

top the volume on Women. At a glance that book looked exactly like its sister, kept hidden in a drawer; but in fact there was a boundless distinction. No hand had overwritten the label of that book there raising it to the peer

in only one way. Charles, with no good grace, sa

ly he found that clients expected to take all a man's time, including nights even. Teaching he did not love, and yet, as he had enjoyed an excellent education, it "came easier" than anything else. His boast to friends, indeed, was that he could teach anything, whether he had ever heard of it before or not; and it was a fact that at a private school once-years ago, in the interval between college and law-school-he had taught Spanish on three days' notice,

hat probably the only living compeer of the lady in Sweden must put as

ré! Avez vous vu le grand ch

etest

by reading in a magazine that Roman Cato learned Greek at eighty. She had pointed out to her daughter, quite excitedly, that she herself was but seventy-one, and French was

s?ur Marie n'est pas jamais aussi

s golden mo

with observations about the Curé and naughty little Henry). Here, for what time he had, the young modern set down, on a fresh page, preliminary Notes, such

m bite

from being the case: these were his inviolable secrets. Yet so real were his imaginings to the young man, so reactionary seemed even the thought of a Novel of

ferent cousin); and on succeeding afternoons, when he took his walks abroad, he did not turn his steps,

ort, was found parading Washington Street, where the largest possible number of people would be certain to see her, in the company of the too celebrated Miss Trevenna. And then the authority thought of t