Page:Margaret Sherwood--A Puritan in Bohemia.djvu/135

A Puritan Bohemia There was a Whitmanite who did huge landscapes. The short-haired girl who aspired to be an animal sculptor was a follower of Ibsen. She talked much of the emancipation of woman from domestic life. Sometimes, as she toiled with wet clay, she wiped a tear away from her cheek with her short coat-sleeve. She was thinking of her dead lover.

The Baroness was the only inhabitant of this world of definite work and vague spiritual enthusiasms who had not a pet notion. The Baroness made beautiful embroidery.

Helen learned much from these women. There were questions of vast import to discuss how to make drapery out of fishnets; how to convert the lower part of a book-case into a pantry; how to make ball-costumes out of Japanese crepe paper; how to know when Welsh rabbit was done.

In return Helen taught them her views.

"What does Miss Wistar mean by calling herself a Socialist?" the Christian Scientist asked one day of Anne Bradford.