Page:Ann Veronica, a modern love story.djvu/52

 up specimens, and peering through her glasses at them—"among crustaceans and things, just as little creatures, just as little creatures, ever inferior to the females.  Mere hangers on.  Things you would laugh at.  And among human beings, too, women to begin with were the rulers and leaders; they owned all the property, they invented all the arts. The primitive government was the Matriarchate. The Matriarchate! The Lords of Creation just ran about and did what they were told."

"But is that really so?" said Ann Veronica.

"It has been proved," said Miss Miniver, and added, "by American professors."

"But how did they prove it?"

"By science," said Miss Miniver, and hurried on, putting out a rhetorical hand that showed a slash of finger through its glove. "And now, look at us! See what we have become.  Toys!  Delicate trifles!  A sex of invalids.  It is we who have become the parasites and toys."

It was, Ann Veronica felt, at once absurd and extraordinarily right. Hetty, who had periods of lucid expression, put the thing for her from her pillow. She charged boldly into the space of Miss Miniver's rhetorical pause.

"It isn't quite that we're toys. Nobody toys with me.  Nobody regards Constance or Vee as a delicate trifle."

Teddy made some confused noise, a thoracic street row; some remark was assassinated by a rival in his throat and buried hastily under a cough.

"They'd better not," said Hetty. "The point is we're not toys, toys isn't the word; we're