The Merryweathers Part 9

"Bell, you know I never _can_ decide between Shakespeare and Raphael. I have to be both; they lived quite far enough apart for separate incarnations."

"Greedy, grasping girl!" said Bell. "Kitty, who are you?"

"Jim Hawkins!" said Kitty, promptly.

"No fiction allowed this time, Missy, only history!"

"Oh, dear! well, then--Francis Drake!"

"Bound to have a pirate, aren't you, Kitty?" said Gertrude, mischievously.

"He wasn't a pirate!" cried Kitty, indignantly. "He was a great hero."

"_L'un n'empechait pas l'autre_, in those days!" said Bell.

"Well, now for yourself, Bell!" said Margaret. "It is your turn."

"Oh, I didn't need any two minutes," said Bell. "I am always William the Silent. I should be Beethoven if it were not for the deafness, but that I could not have borne."

"You all want to be men, don't you?" observed Margaret, thoughtfully.

"Why--yes, so we do! you are the only one who chose a woman."

"Everybody would be a man if they could!" cried Peggy, throwing grammar to the winds, as she was apt to do when excited.

"No, indeed, everybody would not!" cried Margaret, her soft eyes lighting up. "Nothing would induce me to be a man."

"I don't think you would make a very good one, to be sure!" said Peggy, looking affectionately at her cousin. "But I bet--I mean wager--you told me I might say 'wager,' Margaret!--that none of the other girls would hesitate a minute if they had the chance. I wouldn't! Think of it! No petticoats, no fuss, no having to remember to do this, and not to do that; and no hairpins, or gloves, or best hats--"

"Ah!" said Bell; "that is only the smallest part, Peggy. I don't mind the hairpin part--though of course it is a joy to get out here and dispense with them--but still, that is only a trifle. The thing I think about is the freedom, the strength, the power to go right ahead and _do_ things!" and, as she spoke, Bell threw her head back and stretched her arms abroad with a vigorous gesture. "Of course we girls are all well and strong, but it isn't the same strength as a man's. We are constantly running up against things we cannot, ought not to do. I _do_ envy the boys, I cannot help it."

"Yes!" cried Margaret, leaning forward, a soft flush rising to her cheeks. "I know--it is glorious to see them; but, Bell, isn't the very weakness part of our strength? Isn't it just because women _know_ the--the things they cannot do, that they are able to understand and sympathize, and--and help, in ways that men cannot, because they do not know?"

"I think Margaret is right!" said Gertrude, slowly. "And besides, there is strength and strength, Bell. For long endurance of pain or hards.h.i.+p, the woman will outlast the man nine times out of ten, I believe; and I heard Doctor Strong say once that women would often bear pain quietly that would set a man raving. Yes, I come over to your side, May Margaret. I would take Joan of Arc, if it were not for the stake. Let me see--oh, I know! I will be Grace Darling."

"Who was she?" asked Kitty.

"The lighthouse-keeper's daughter, at Longstone, off the Yorks.h.i.+re coast. A s.h.i.+p, the _Forfars.h.i.+re_, was wrecked on the rocks near by, and there seemed no chance of saving any of the crew; but Grace persuaded her father to try, and just those two rowed out, in a most terrible storm, to the reef on which the vessel had been wrecked, and saved the nine men, all that were left out of sixty-three, who were clinging to the rocks, waiting for death. Why wasn't that just as fine as commanding an army, or even leading a forlorn hope in battle? Then there was dear Margaret Roper--I think she is the one for you, May Margaret!--and Cochrane's Bonny Grizzy, and--oh, ever and ever so many of them. Yes, I take up my stand once and for all on my own side."

"Well!" said Bell, shaking her head. "I hear what you say, Betsy, but it makes no difference,--does it, Peggy?--though I admit the force of your remarks."

"Not a bit!" said Peggy. "I wouldn't have been Mrs. La Salle for a farm."

"There wasn't any!" said Margaret.

"The principle remains the same," said Peggy, "as Miss Russell used to say."

"There is another thing!" said Margaret. "Your life out here, Bell, shows me how much girls _can_ do; I mean in the active, outdoor, athletic way. More than I ever dreamed they could do. It really seems to me that, except just for the petticoats, you have very few drawbacks. I suppose it is having all the brothers. Why, you know as much as they do about the woods and all."

"Yes, it's partly the boys," said Bell; "but it is much more Papa. You see, from the time we could walk, he has always taken us out into the woods and fields, and made us use our eyes and ears, and talked to us about things. We should not know anything, if it were not for Papa."

"He does seem to know almost everything!" said Margaret. "I never saw any one like him."

"There _isn't_ any one like him," said Gertrude, decidedly. "What have you got there, Margaret?"

Margaret had drawn a letter from her pocket, and was looking it over.

"An argument on my side," she said, smiling. "May I read it aloud?"

"Do! do!" cried all the girls.

Margaret smoothed out the crumpled pages affectionately. "He carried it in his pocket two days before he remembered to post it!" she said. "I judge from the date, and the appearance of the envelope. There was candy in his pocket, and"--she sniffed at the letter--"yes! tar, without doubt. Now listen!

"'DEAR COUSIN MARGARET:--We miss you awfully, and Uncle John says it is no kind of a house without you, and it isn't. We went a walk yesterday, Susan D. and me and the dogs, because you know it was Sunday; Uncle John was coming too, but he had roomatizm and coud not.

Well Cousin Margaret, we walked over the big hill and just then the dogs began howling and yelling in the most awful manner, and running round and round like they were crazy; and we ran to see what was up, and we found out, I tell you! It was white hornets, about ten thousand of them, and the dogs had rolled in a nest of them, and they were stinging their noses, and they flew at us with perf.e.c.k fewry, I mean the hornets did. I hollered and ran, but Susan D. said wait she knew what to do, so she said "Come on," and we ran down to the brook and she took mud and put it on my stings before she touched her own, and it took a good deal of the pane out though not all. And then she put it on the dogs' noses, and they understood like persons, and poked them into the mud themselves and soon forgot their pane. But I thought I would tell you this Cousin Margaret, because Susan D. did really behave like a perf.e.c.k brick, and you always said girls were as brave as boys but I never thought so before but now I do; because I hollered right out when they stung me which I am ashamed of. You said confession was good for the sole, and so I think: so now I will say good-by from

"'BASIL.'"

"What a dear boy!" cried Gertrude.

"Oh, he is!" said Margaret, the happy tears springing to her eyes. "He is one of the very dearest boys that ever lived, Gertrude; so manly and honest, and so funny, too. Gerald knows him!" she added, shyly. "I wish he had been at home when you were there, Peggy."

"Yes; he must be a brick!" said Peggy. "Now, Margaret, you know he is, and you know that nothing but 'brick' expresses what I mean. Girls, I appeal to you. Margaret wants me to talk like a professor all the time, and I am not a professor, and am never likely to be one. Bell, isn't 'brick' all right?"

Bell looked conscious. "I confess I say it, Peggy; I confess it seems much heartier than the same thing in what my mother calls good English.

Still--I believe it would sound very queer to me if she used it; the mother, I mean."

"Grace used to say 'a quadrangular piece of baked clay!'" said Gertrude.

"Don't you remember, Peggy?"

"So she did--dear thing! Well, but, Bell, would you have girls talk just the way grown-up people do? It would sound awfully stiff and poky. I don't mean that it sounds so when your mother talks!" she cried; "of course you know I don't mean that. But girls _aren't_ grown-up, you know."

"But they are going to be!" said Margaret. "If they don't learn good English now, how are they going to do it later? It does seem to me a terrible pity, with all our great, glorious language, to use so little of it, and to use it so often wrong. You may think me priggish and professorial, and anything else you like, Peggy dear, but that is what I think."

"I love you to distraction," said Peggy; "you are an angel, but I think you carry it too far. What would you say instead of 'brick?' how would you describe this boy--who simply _is_ a brick?"

Margaret reflected. "I should say he was a nice, manly boy!" she said, presently.

"Nice! now, Margaret! 'nice' is niminy, you know it is, and piminy too."

"The great advantage of 'brick,'" said Bell, "is that it is one word, and 'nice manly boy' is three, and doesn't mean the same thing then."

"There!" cried Peggy, in triumph. "What do you say to that, Margaret?

Find one word in your old 'good English' that does express 'brick?'"

"Well--it isn't easy!" Margaret admitted. "'Trump' is the only one I can think of, and I suppose that was slang fifty years ago."

"The mother says that when a word has held its own for twenty years, it isn't slang any more," said Gertrude. "The question is--"