The Sealed Letter
reading, shopping, and yawning," says Helen easily. "London's so dead, off-season." She scans the drawing-room. "I'm thinking of having gaslight put in; I believe I could talk Harry into it, in the spirit of scientific progress."
    "Think again," Fido advises her. "I find it more trouble than it's worth. It leaks, stinks of sulphur, blackens the ceiling, and it's far too hot in the summer."
    "Mm," says Helen, "but so marvellously bright! Move with the times, isn't that the watchword for you moderns?"
    "Only real progress," says Fido, a little uncomfortable with the teasing, "not experiment for its own sake."
    "I'd call running one's own publishing house experimental. It must feel peculiar, to earn one's bread."
    Fido grins at her. "I'll tell you what, my dear—if one gets paid for one's work, one knows somebody wants it. And one gains a power to do real good in the world. The first time I ever brought a cheque to the bank, and saw it cashed into hard golden sovereigns ... Perhaps you should try it," she adds slyly.
    Helen only giggles. "I wonder, did you read about Madame Genviève last week?"
    "I don't know the lady."
    "Nor I: a tightrope walker, as well as wife and mother," she explains. "Madame Genviève was performing blindfolded at a fête in Birmingham when she toppled to her death. It turns out she was unbalanced—"
    "Mentally?"
    "Literally," Helen corrects her, "by being in the last month of a delicate condition."
    Fido winces.
    "So perhaps nature has set some bounds to female ambition?"
    "That's a ghoulish anecdote, Helen, not a reasoned argument." She cackles.
    "I always felt like a cow, in the final months. It was hard enough to walk upstairs, let alone along a high wire."
    "Come, come," says Fido, straight-faced, "what of the pride of giving life to a new soul?"
    "Speaks one who's never tried it," cries Helen, poking her in the arm. "All I remember is the smell of the chloroform, and the curious sensation of skyrockets going off in my head. After that it's simply messy and confining," she tells Fido, "and I could never summon any tendre for them till the first few months were over. A newborn's frightful when undressed: swollen head, skinny limbs, and that terrible froglike action."
    All Fido can do is laugh.
    "But tell me more about this Reform Firm, isn't that what you call yourselves?"
    "You're well informed." Fido is gratified that Helen would take such an interest in the Cause.
    "Oh, the papers from home were full of you and your comrades at Langham Place: your English Woman's Journal and Married Women's Property Bill, your Victoria Press..."
    "Then I'm sure you've read as much in the way of mockery as praise. The Reform Firm is what our enemies dubbed us—but like the Quakers, we've embraced the title, to take the sting out of it."
    "So is this Miss Parkes the boss of the Firm?"
    Fido shakes her head. "We're an informal knot of fellows," she explains, "each working on a variety of schemes to improve the lot of women. For instance, after that dreadful shipwreck last year in which all the female passengers drowned, we managed to persuade Marylebone Baths to open for women's classes one day a week."
    Helen is clearly not interested in swimming classes. "Come, there's always a leader."
    "Well, Madame Bodichon—Bar Smith, as was—could be called our guiding angel," says Fido, "as she ran and funded the first campaigns. But she's married a wild Algerian doctor and spends most of the year there."
    "How sensible of her," says Helen wryly.
    "Miss Bessie Parkes is Madame's chief acolyte and dearest friend, and set up the English Woman's Journal, and edited it till her health obliged her to resign the job to Miss Davies—a new comrade, but awfully capable—so yes, I dare say Miss Parkes could be considered first among equals" Fido admits. "My own efforts have focused on the press and SPEW—the Society for Promoting the Employment of Women—"
    "What an unfortunate acronym," cries Helen.
    "Isn't it! But five years
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