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Page 52
"By George! Carley, sometimes I think you've changed since you've been
here," he said, with warmth. "To go through that sandstorm without one
kick--one knock at my West!"
"Glenn, I always think of what Flo says--the worst is yet to come," replied
Carley, trying to hide her unreasonable and tumultuous pleasure at words of
praise from him.
"Carley Burch, you don't know yourself," he declared, enigmatically.
"What woman knows herself? But do you know me?"
"Not I. Yet sometimes I see depths in you--wonderful possibilities--
submerged under your poise--under your fixed, complacent idle attitude
toward life."
This seemed for Carley to be dangerously skating near thin ice, but she
could not resist a retort:
"Depths in me? Why I am a shallow, transparent stream like your West Fork!
. . . And as for possibilities--may I ask what of them you imagine you see?"
"As a girl, before you were claimed by the world, you were earnest at
heart. You had big hopes and dreams. And you had intellect, too. But you
have wasted your talents, Carley. Having money, and spending it, living for
pleasure, you have not realized your powers. . . . Now, don't look hurt.
I'm not censuring you, It's just the way of modern life. And most of your
friends have been more careless, thoughtless, useless than you. The aim of
their existence is to be comfortable, free from work, worry, pain. They
want pleasure, luxury. And what a pity it is! The best of you girls regard
marriage as an escape, instead of responsibility. You don't marry to get
your shoulders square against the old wheel of American progress--to help
some man make good--to bring a troop of healthy American kids into the
world. You bare your shoulders to the gaze of the multitude and like it
best if you are strung with pearls."
"Glenn, you distress me when you talk like this," replied Carley, soberly.
"You did not use to talk so. It seems to me you are bitter against women."
"Oh no, Carley! I am only sad," he said. "I only see where once I was
blind. American women are the finest on earth, but as a race, if they don't
change, they're doomed to extinction."
"How can you say such things?" demanded Carley, with spirit.
"I say them because they are true. Carley, on the level now, tell me how
many of your immediate friends have children."
Put to a test, Carley rapidly went over in mind her circle of friends, with
the result that she was somewhat shocked and amazed to realize how few of
them were even married, and how the babies of her acquaintance were limited
to three. It was not easy to admit this to Glenn.
"My dear," replied he, "if that does not show you the handwriting on the
wall, nothing ever will."
"A girl has to find a husband, doesn't she?" asked Carley, roused to
defense of her sex. "And if she's anybody she has to find one in her set.
Well, husbands are not plentiful. Marriage certainly is not the end of
existence these days. We have to get along somehow. The high cost of living
is no inconsderable factor today. Do you know that most of the better-class
apartment houses in New York will not take children? Women are not all to
blame. Take the speed mania. Men must have automobiles. I know one girl who
wanted a baby, but her husband wanted a car. They couldn't afford both."
"Carley, I'm not blaming women more than men," returned Glenn. "I don't
know that I blame them as a class. But in my own mind I have worked it all
out. Every man or woman who is genuinely American should read the signs of
the times, realize the crisis, and meet it in an American way. Otherwise we
are done as a race. Money is God in the older countries. But it should
never become God in America. If it does we will make the fall of Rome pale
into insignificance."
"Glenn, let's put off the argument," appealed Carley. "I'm not--just up to
fighting you today. Oh--you needn't smile. I'm not showing a yellow streak,
as Flo puts it. I'll fight you some other time."
"You're right, Carley," he assented. "Here we are loafing six or seven
miles from home. Let's rustle along."
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