These racy confidences entertained and delighted her father, but on other people they often had a contrary effect. The truth from the lips of babes and sucklings, however phenomenal, is also disconcerting. Old women, who in private taught their daughters a revolting cynicism, and called it "putting them on their guard," were much overcome by Phyllis’ frankness. It was "bold"; it was "unladylike"; it was "dreadful." They tore Phyllis to pieces, and prophesied the most awful things. It may be that they were right. Selfishness is a fine ballast, and an anxious regard for number one keeps many a little ship on an undeviating course. Phyllis was made to smart for her unconventional sayings, and they often came back to her, so distorted and coarsened by their travels, that her cheeks flushed with anger.
"There’s one thing I am learning fast," she said, "and that is, all my friends seem to be men, and all my enemies, women--and I may as well get used to it now. I know there are a few exceptions either way, but it’s substantially that, anyhow, and one might as well face up to it, and save trouble."
"I’m afraid you are what they call a man’s woman, my dear," said Mr. Ladd.
"I’m glad of it," exclaimed Phyllis saucily. "I don’t want to be any other kind of a woman, least of all one of those sneaking, cowardly, backbiting, hypocritical things. I don’t wonder they used to whip them in the good old days. If men hadn’t degenerated so terribly, they’d be whipping them now!"
Autumn saw her back in Carthage again. Aunt Sarah was begging to have her for another Washington winter, and was in a beautifully forgiving humor. The breaches in her social position had been repaired, and the Demon Want, confound him, was knocking loudly at the door of her elegant establishment--so that the hope of another visit, with its accompanying shower of Brother Bob’s gold, loomed very attractively before these cold, blue eyes. But Phyllis could not be beguiled; she had no wish to repeat that mad winter; her mood was all the other way--for her big tranquil house, her books, her dogs, her horses, and long dreaming hours to herself, undisturbed. She had loved Washington, and had exhausted it. The strain of its business-like gaiety was not to be endured again. It was a factory of pleasure, and the hours over-long, the tasks over-hard. Aunt Sarah might ring the bell all she wished, but the factory that winter would be one toiler short. When a person has entered her twenty-second year, that advanced age brings with it a certain serenity unknown to wilder twenty. You are glad to lie back with a dog’s head in your lap, and lazily watch the procession. Silly young men, choking in immense collars, no longer can keep you out of bed till three A.M. Let the new débutantes have that doubtful joy. Twenty-two preferred her book, and her silent rooms.--Not that Carthage was without its simple relaxations, but they were well spaced out, with long intervals between.