"
XXXII
HOWARD'S PROFESSION
When Howard came back from Cambridge he had a long talk with Maud
over the future; it seemed almost tacitly agreed that he should
return to his work there, at all events for a time.
"I feel very selfish and pompous about all this," said Howard; "MY
work, MY sphere--what nonsense it all is! Why should I come down to
Windlow, take possession, and having picked the sweetest flower in
the garden, stick it in my buttonhole and march away?"
Maud laughed and said, "Oh, no, it isn't that--it is quite a simple
matter. You have learnt a trade, a difficult trade; why should you
give it up? We don't happen to need the money, but that doesn't
matter. My business is to take off your shoulders, if I can, all
the trouble entailed on you by marrying me--it's simply a division
of labour. You can't just settle down in the country as a small
squire, with nothing much to do. People must do the work they can
do, and I should be miserable if I thought I had pulled you out of
your place in the world."
"I don't know," said Howard; "there seems to me to be something
rather stuffy about it: why can't we just live? Women do; there is
no fuss made about their work, and their need to express
themselves; yet they do it even more than men, and they do it
without priggishness. My work at Cambridge is just what everyone
else is doing, and if I don't do it, there will be half a dozen men
capable of doing it and glad to do it.
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