Of course it would not
do for them to meet just now--Linn is too weak to stand any
excitement--and he will be so for some time to come; still, I think Nina
would wait that time if we told her she could be of help. Then once
these two have seen each other and spoken, let them take the management
of their own affairs. Why, good gracious me!" he exclaimed, in lighter
tones, "haven't you and I got our own affairs to manage, too? I have
just been drawing up a code of regulations for the better governing of a
wife!"
"Oh, indeed!" said Francie.
"Yes, indeed," said he, firmly. "I am a believer in the good old robust
virtues that have made England what she is--or rather, what she has
been. I'm not a sentimentalist. If the sentimentalists and the theorists
and the faddists go on as they are doing, they'll soon leave us without
any England at all; England will be moralized away to nothing; there
will only be her name and her literature left to remind the world that
she once existed. The equal rights of women--that's one of their fads.
The equal rights of women! Bosh! Women ought to be very proud and
grateful that they are allowed to live at all! However, that is a
general principle; the particular application of it is that a man should
be master in his own house, and that his wife's first and paramount duty
is to obey him--"
"You shouldn't frighten me too soon, Maurice," she said--but she did not
appear to be terribly scared.
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