Unconsciously
she had stimulated her fellow pupils at school; when she was his
companion, her father had always felt himself stirred to interest and
enterprise.
"You ought to have been a man, Betty," he used to say to her sometimes.
But Betty had not agreed with him.
"You say that," she once replied to him, "because you see I am inclined
to do things, to change them, if they need changing. Well, one is either
born like that, or one is not. Sometimes I think that perhaps the people
who must ACT are of a distinct race. A kind of vigorous restlessness
drives them. I remember that when I was a child I could not see a pin
lying upon the ground without picking it up, or pass a drawer which
needed closing, without giving it a push. But there has always been as
much for women to do as for men."
There was much to be done here of one sort of thing and another. That
was certain. As she gazed through the small panes of her large windows,
she found herself overlooking part of a wilderness of garden, which
revealed itself through an arch in an overgrown laurel hedge. She had
glimpses of unkempt grass paths and unclipped topiary work which had
lost its original form. Among a tangle of weeds rose the heads of clumps
of daffodils, stirred by a passing wind of spring.
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