As for me, you don't
suppose I don't want everything we poor women can get, or that I would
refuse any privilege or advantage that's offered me? I don't rant or
rave about anything, but I have--as I told you just now--my own quiet
way of being zealous. If you had no worse partisan than I, you would do
very well. My son has talked to me immensely about your ideas; and even
if I should enter into them only because he does, I should do so quite
enough. You may say you don't see Henry dangling about after a wife who
gives public addresses; but I am convinced that a great many things are
coming to pass--very soon, too--that we don't see in advance. Henry is a
gentleman to his finger-tips, and there is not a situation in which he
will not conduct himself with tact."
Olive could see that they really wanted Verena immensely, and it was
impossible for her to believe that if they were to get her they would
not treat her well. It came to her that they would even overindulge her,
flatter her, spoil her; she was perfectly capable, for the moment, of
assuming that Verena was susceptible of deterioration and that her own
treatment of her had been discriminatingly severe. She had a hundred
protests, objections, replies; her only embarrassment could be as to
which she should use first.
"I think you have never seen Doctor Tarrant and his wife," she remarked,
with a calmness which she felt to be very pregnant.
"You mean they are absolutely fearful? My son has told me they are quite
impossible, and I am quite prepared for that.
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