Would you like to be an accomplished woman?"
"If it please you, father."
"Now may the devil fly away with the whole sex! If they _do_ happen
to desire anything good in itself, it's always to please some man or
another. Sophia, I ask you if, for your own sake, and for the sake
of knowledge, you will be my pupil; if you care to pursue--" Captain
Runacles checked himself, not because he had any idea that he was
talking over the head of a girl of seven, but because a general
proposition had occurred to him.
"Woman's notion of a pursuit," he said, clasping his hands behind him
and regarding his daughter's tear-stained face with severity--
"woman's notion of a pursuit is entirely passive. Her only idea is
to be pursued, and even so her mind runs on ultimate capture.
Sophia," he continued, himself forgetting for the moment his view of
knowledge as _sui causa optandum_, "would you like to please me by
licking that boy across the hedge into a cocked-hat?"
"But--oh, father!"
"What is it?"
She could not answer for a moment. Nor did he know that she besought
God every night to change her into a boy that she might find some
grace in his sight.
"You have one advantage," said her father coldly, as she struggled to
keep down her tears.
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