The children were all nearly a year older when Mrs. Grubb one day climbed the flight of wooden steps heading to Marm Lisa's Paradise, and met, as she did so, a procession of Mistress Mary's neophytes who were wending their way homeward.
The spectacle of a number of persons of either ***, or of both ***es, proceeding in hue or grouped as an audience, acted on Mrs. Grubb precisely as the taste of fresh blood is supposed to act on a tiger in captivity. At such a moment she had but one impulse, and that was to address the meeting. The particular subject was not vital, since it was never the subject, but her own desire to talk, that furnished the necessary inspiration. While she was beginning, 'Ladies and gentlemen,' in her clear, pheasant voice, her convictions, opinions, views, prejudices, feelings, experiences, all flew from the different corners of what she was pleased to call her brain, and focussed themselves on the point in question.
If the discussion were in a field in which she had made no excursions whatever, that trifling detail did not impose silence upon her. She simply rose, and said:
'Ladies and gentlemen, though a stranger in your midst, I feel I must say a word of sympathy to you, and a word of encouragement for your cause. It is a good and worthy movement, and I honour you for upholding it. Often and often have I said to my classes, it matters not what face of truth is revealed to you so long as you get a vision that will help you to bless your fellow-men. To bless your fellow-men is the great task before each and every one of us, and I feel to urge this specially upon occasions like this, when I see a large and influential audience before me. Says Rudyard Kipling, "I saw a hundred men on the road to Delhi, and they were all my brothers."
Yes, all our brothers! The brotherhood of man and the sisterhood of woman, those are the subjects that include all others. I am glad to have met with you, and to have heard the eloquent words of your speakers. If any of you would like to know more of my work, I will gladly meet you in Room A at the close of this meeting.'
She then sat down amid applause. Never did Mrs. S. Cora Grubb cease speaking without at least a ripple of approval that sometimes grew into a positive ovation. What wonder, then, that she mistook herself for an inspired person? It was easy to understand her popularity with her fellow-men. Her eyes were as soft and clear as those of a child, her hair waved prettily off her low, serene brow, her figure was plump and womanly, and when her voice trembled with emotion (which in her was a shallow well very near the surface) the charmingest pink colour came and went in her cheeks. On such occasions more than one member of the various brotherhoods thought what a cosy wife she would make, if removed from the public arena to the 'sweet, safe corner of the household fire.' To be sure, she had not much logic, but plenty of sentiment; rather too great a fondness for humanity, perhaps, but that was because she had no husband and family of her own to absorb her superfluous sympathy and energy.
Mrs. Grubb was not so easily classified as these 'brothers' imagined, however, and fortunately for them she had no leanings towards any man's fireside. Mr. Grubb had died in the endeavour to understand her, and it is doubtful whether, had he been offered a second life and another opportunity, he would have thought the end justified the means.
This criticism, however, applies only to the family circle, for Mrs.
