"
"But I do not understand you. How then can I promise to obey your will?"
"The fashion is rapidly gaining ground for women to have some pet scheme
of reform. A few of them have such ambition for publicity they take their
pet scheme, and the platform, and go trailing over the land like comets.
Now I do not wish you to join this motley crowd, though your heart does
burn over the unacknowledged perfections of the poor."
"Surely, Mr. Winthrop, you do not insinuate there is the remotest
possibility of such a thing, that I will go to lecturing," I said, with
rising color.
"Have you not already begun the work? But I shall be very glad to have
your promise that you will not seek a larger audience to listen to you
than your present one."
"Are you in earnest?"
"I am certainly in earnest when I assure you it is my desire that you
will not take up lecturing, or develop into a woman with a career."
I looked at him closely, and turning away, said, "Some day I hope to get
wise enough to know when you are in earnest and when you are merely
bantering me."
"I think your faculties in that respect are rapidly developing. You
discovered before I did that it was merely badinage on Mr. Winthrop's
part," Mrs. Flaxman said, genially.
"But, Mr. Winthrop," I said, turning to him once more, "is it right for
you to judge those women so harshly who seize any honest way to get a
hearing? I believe the majority of them are as much in earnest about
their work as you are in any of your most cherished undertakings.
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