Page:Maud Howe - Atlanta in the South.djvu/168



on her return to town was genuinely glad to see Margaret Ruysdale again. She had become attached to the lonely young girl who had grown to womanhood without a mother or a sister and with next to no feminine influence in her life, her father and his friends having always been her most intimate associates. It was to this fact that Sara Harden attributed the serious character of her friend. "If I ever have a daughter," she had said, "I shall bring her up just as Margaret has been brought up. She shall never speak to a woman if I can help it. Women make one another silly. We drop in to see each other, and spend the morning wasting each other's time in talking gossip and ball-dresses, servants and teething-babies. We don't dare to talk to men like that; they would n't stand it. We discuss things worth thinking about with them. But with our sisters we feel bound to limit ourselves to the useful sphere of domesticity, and it does n't do us any good. Do you think I would use white