Her hand, though very soft, was larger than most women would like to
have, or than they could afford to have, though not a whit too large in
proportion with the spacious plan of Zenobia's entire development. It
did one good to see a fine intellect (as hers really was, although its
natural tendency lay in another direction than towards literature) so
fitly cased. She was, indeed, an admirable figure of a woman, just on
the hither verge of her richest maturity, with a combination of
features which it is safe to call remarkably beautiful, even if some
fastidious persons might pronounce them a little deficient in softness
and delicacy. But we find enough of those attributes everywhere.
Preferable--by way of variety, at least--was Zenobia's bloom, health,
and vigor, which she possessed in such overflow that a man might well
have fallen in love with her for their sake only. In her quiet moods,
she seemed rather indolent; but when really in earnest, particularly if
there were a spice of bitter feeling, she grew all alive to her
finger-tips.
"I am the first comer," Zenobia went on to say, while her smile beamed
warmth upon us all; "so I take the part of hostess for to-day, and
welcome you as if to my own fireside. You shall be my guests, too, at
supper. Tomorrow, if you please, we will be brethren and sisters, and
begin our new life from daybreak."
"Have we our various parts assigned?" asked some one.
"Oh, we of the softer sex," responded Zenobia, with her mellow, almost
broad laugh,--most delectable to hear, but not in the least like an
ordinary woman's laugh,--"we women (there are four of us here already)
will take the domestic and indoor part of the business, as a matter of
course. To bake, to boil, to roast, to fry, to stew,--to wash, and
iron, and scrub, and sweep,--and, at our idler intervals, to repose
ourselves on knitting and sewing,--these, I suppose, must be feminine
occupations, for the present. By and by, perhaps, when our individual
adaptations begin to develop themselves, it may be that some of us who
wear the petticoat will go afield, and leave the weaker brethren to
take our places in the kitchen."
"What a pity," I remarked, "that the kitchen, and the housework
generally, cannot be left out of our system altogether! It is odd
enough that the kind of labor which falls to the lot of women is just
that which chiefly distinguishes artificial life--the life of
degenerated mortals--from the life of Paradise. Eve had no dinner-pot,
and no clothes to mend, and no washing-day."