THE HEW WOMAN.

Gisborne Times, Volume XXIX, Issue 3254, 27 June 1911, Page 3

THE HEW WOMAN.

Only by . the glimmer of a nightlight could'one. lave seen the two little figores'(like flowers, ail young and dainty; sea.ted together on the side of the bed. the baby, latest Lord of the House, snoozed in a cot near by. A pair of eyes clear and truthful anti brown as pebbles under water looked into a pair of eyes moist blue, like an April sky. The eyes showed amazement. ■ ; “And now she's done it.”

Marie/- of .the moist blue eyes, exclaimed 'breathlessly, “Yes, but how ?” “I’m. /glad you are stopping here,” said Ms/cige. “because if I couldn’t tell somebody : I’d burst. - You know I went oway to stay and had the measles; well, when I came hack yesterday and was driving back from the station with nurse, I looked out of the window and there they were.” “Heaps’ and heaps and heaps/’ said Marie. ■ “And heaps,” said Madge. “Every lady gone quite flat and sausagv. ■" And nurse said, ‘Law, it’s the flapper craze.’” “My nurse says,” said Marie eagerly, “that, if you don’t look seventeen now in, the figure, she said, you’re simply not in it.” “Well,”' Madge went on, her hare legs swinging as she talked. “I came home and went into the study to father, and father kissed me and said, ‘Oh, my poor child.’ And I said, ‘Why?’ And lie said, ‘I wonder if you’ll know your mother,’ and I said, ‘l’d know, mother anywhere.’ And then he lit his pipe and said —yon know what when he burns his fingers, and then he said in the voice he has when unsuspected hills come in, or the kitchen fire roars, ‘My darling, your mother has changed her figure.’, And I said, ‘How?’ And he said. ‘How is a poor man to know how they do it? Anyhow, there she is, or what’s left of her.’ ” “And then?” said Marie. “Flip, flap, flapper,” said the baby softly. “And then,’’ said Madge, “she came in all wrong.’’ # * * * *

“How do mean, all wrong?” said Mario. “I said, Oil, mother,’ and she said, ‘What is it, darling?’ and I said, ‘Oh, mother, the place where I used to lay my head when I was sleepy isn’t there.’ And fathor laughed and said, ‘Skin and bone women are the fashion nowadays, and .a really fine, splendid big woman isn’t fit to live—so they tell me.’ And mother said, ‘John,’ like she does when he burns a hole in the carpet with a cigarette end; she said, ‘John, w/iat nonsense you talk! I have simply changed the make of my —’ But before she could finish father put down his pipe and said, ‘You and your siliv sex have just about come to the craziest moment of your silly lives. When I look about me in the street there doesn’t seem to be on© woman left with a figure fit to be the mother of children. You. look like a lot of elderly school girls who’ve been left out in the rain.’ ” “Oli, do wait a minute,” said Marie, “because I want to tell you what my father said. He looked at mother and he looked and he looked, and at last he said, ‘How did you get that very unmarried look?’ and mother, who’s awfully sweet when he gets like that, just answered. ‘We all look like that nowadays.’ Then father said, ‘Bring me a small anti-fat and soda and let me die.’ And mother froze him with one of her not-at-home glances, and tried to sail out of the room, hut you know they can’t sail out of rooms any more, and slic’d forgotten and nearly tripped up, and father laughed.” “It’s just about the limpet,” said the baby, gurgling * -*■*-*►. - * *

“And do you know.” said Madge solemnly, “mother won’t touch potatoes, or bread, or chocolates and all sorts of things, and when I asked lier why, she said, ‘You ought to know, darling, if you were into tea to-day.’ And then I remembered.” ‘ ‘Do you have them too ?’ ’ said Marie. “All sort of braced up to look thin, anu all the hones they can persuade to show showing, and hats like waste paper baskets with a hearth brush stuck in them. We have heaps and heaps and heaps.” “And heaps,” sighed Madge. “And father put liis head into the drawingroom by accident and jumped away as if he’d been shot, and I saw lie wanted me, -so I went into the study, and he was murmuring like he does murmur. “Just like a lot of skewers with - a little cats’ meat left on ’em.’ And I said, ‘Daddy, are you ouite well?’ and he burst round and said, ‘Yes, young twopenny, and I’m getting stout, and I Tike it, and I feel splendid and fit, and I suppose that’s not in the fashion. What arc they doing in my house, eh? Drinking anti-fat and talking about their nerves. I suppose, and trying to look like lialf-dead schoolgirls.’ And I said, ‘Theyer’ only ladies.’ ‘I wish there was a woman among them,’ said father; ‘a real big, bouncing Venus. She’d make ’em look silly skinned rats, that’s what they arc, my dear. No development, .no curves, no fine broad shoulders.’ And I said. ‘Feel my muscle,’ just to comfort him. And he looked at me with the expression he had when our dog died, and lie said. ‘You’re a rum Atm, aren’t you?’ And I said, ‘John/ like mother doe/; when lie ruffles her hair, and he laughed, and said, quite solemnly, ‘My dear, promise me when you grow up that you’ll never be ashamed of a fine, wholesome figure. Now run away.’ ” Then Marie took Madge’s hand and said, “Madge, what are you going to be when you grow up?” And Madge said, ’“l’m going to be a mother.” “And so am I,” said Madge, holding her close. “And I’m going to have heaps and heaps and heaps of babies, and I’m going to- have an ample bosom for them all to rest on, aren’t you?” Madge nodded sleepily. “Heaps and heaps,” she said, dreamily. “Hundreds and thousands,” said the baby from the cot. ,7 * * * * *

And then tliey tucked themselves together in the hed so that a strand of Marie’s golden hair shone across the ebony black of Madge’s locks. And after that the door was opened gently and a .white-robed figure came in. She stretched her arms luxuriously, and whispered to herself, “Now I can breathe.” And the scent of her was like the scent of cowslips on a warm day. And as she looked at the children asleep in bed her husband came tiptoeing into the room and kissed her very gently and' held her in his arms. All" soft she was and warm. And the woman, the Eve the mother of all men, was freed in her, and she bent down to kiss the sleeping children all fashion faded away, and all nerves, and all the follies of the daylight and the decadent times. , And no one but the fairies who watch nerpetfially over night, nurseries, and her husband and I know what it was that sparkled in her eyes and slid down and made a tiny, glistening road for one moment on the locks of golden and black. And if it was a tear, what matter.-for if it was it was the tear all mothers shed because their babies must grow on. —Dion O. Galthrop, in the “Daily Mail.”