“Yes,” Jack said, unconsciously, “women enjoy crying—­”

“You insufferable braggart, how dare you talk like that?  Pray, what do you know about women’s likes and dislikes?”

“Oh, I beg pardon, Polly; I’m sure I didn’t mean anything—­I was taking the minor for the major.  All women like babies; babies pass most of their time crying; therefore women like crying.”

“Well, if that is the sum of your college training, it is a good thing the war came—­”

“What about the war?  No treason in Rosedale, remember!” Vincent shouted from the next room.  “You pledged me that when you talked war you would talk in open assembly.”  The voice neared the open doorway as he spoke.  The servant had moved the invalid’s cot, where Vincent could look in on Jack.

“There was really no war talk, Vint, except such war as women always raise, contention—­”

“I object, Jack, to your generalization,” Olympia retorted.  “It is a habit of boyishness and immaturity.—­He said a moment ago” (she turned to Vincent) “that women loved crying, and then sneaked out by a very shallow evasion.”

“I’ll leave it to Vint:  All women love babies; babies do nothing but cry; therefore, women love crying; there couldn’t be a syllogism more irrefutable.”

“Unless it be that all women love liars,” Vincent ventured, jocosely.

“How do you prove that?”

“All men are liars; women love men; therefore—­”

“Oh, pshaw! you have to assume in that premise.  I don’t in mine.  It is notorious that women love babies, while you have only the spiteful saying of a very uncertain old prophet for your major—­”

“Whose major?” Rosa asked, appearing suddenly.  “I’ll have you to know, sir, that this major is mamma’s, and no one else can have, hold, or make eyes at him.”

“It was the major in logic we were making free with,” Jack mumbled, laughing.  “I hope logic isn’t a heresy in your new Confederacy, as religion was in the French Constitution of ’93?”

Rosa looked at Olympia, a little perplexed, and, seating herself on the cot with Vincent, where she could caress him furtively, said, with piquant deliberation: 

“I don’t know about logic, but we’ve got everything needed to make us happy in the Montgomery Constitution.”

“Have you read it?” Jack asked, innocently.

“How insulting!  Of course I have.  I read it the very first thing when it appeared in the newspapers.”

“Catch our Northern women doing that!” Jack interjected, loftily.  “There is my learned sister, she doesn’t know the Constitution from Plato’s Dialogues.”

“Indeed, I do not; nor do I know Plato’s Dialogues,” Olympia returned, quite at ease in this state of ignorance.

“Wherein does the Montgomery Constitution differ from the old one?” Jack asked, looking at Vincent.

“I’m blessed if I know.  I’ve read neither.  I did read the Declaration of Independence once at a Fourth-of-July barbecue.  I always thought that was the Constitution.  Indeed, every fellow about here does!  You know in the South the women do all the thinking for the men.  Rosa keeps my political conscience.”