Page:Confessions of a wife (IA confessionsofwif00adamiala).pdf/22

 When you come to think of it, what 's a garden? The walls are stone, and pretty high; there are broken glass bottles all along the top, to keep burglars out and the cat in; James locks the iron gate at eleven; the shrubbery is all trimmed like bushes that have just come from the barber's; there is n't a weed to be seen, and the paths are so narrow that I get my golf-skirt wet. Why, if I were a man, I should be outside, in the clubs, the streets, the theaters,—God knows where,—doing bohemian things, watching people in the slums, going to queer places with policemen, tramping up and down and watching the colored lights on the long bridges, taking tremendous walks out into the country, coming home at any hour, with a latch-key, and wearing a mackintosh—no, I should wear an oil-coat, a long oil-coat, and a fisherman's sou'wester, and I should go—I wonder where? and I should do—I wonder what?

But I am a girl; and I stay in the garden. And that 's bad enough, for the other girls don't care about gardens. I heard a woman tell another woman one day that I was "very imprudent." She said I "went out evenings." I laughed then, for I could afford to, and I did n't care what she said. I don't feel so much like laughing now. The worst thing I ever did in my life I 've done to-night within the last half-hour.