“Well, you know how that freedom-of-the-sex talk always gets me going.  I was mad enough for a minute to spank her just as she stood there in them Non Plush Ultras she was so proud of.  And I did let out some high talk.  Mrs. Dutton told her afterward she thought sure we was having words.

“‘Freedom from skirts,’ I says, ’is the last thing your sex wants.  Skirts is the final refuge of immodesty, to which women will cling like grim death.  They will do any possible thing to a skirt—­slit it, thin it, shorten it, hike it up one side—­people are setting up nights right now thinking up some new thing to do to it—­but women won’t give it up and dress modestly as men do because it’s the only unfair drag they got left with the men.  I see one of our offended sex is daily asking right out in a newspaper:  “Are women people?” I’d just like to whisper to her that no one yet knows.

“’If they’ll quit their skirts, dress as decently as a man does so they won’t have any but a legitimate pull with him, we’d have a chance to find out if they’re good for anything else.  As a matter of fact, they don’t want to be people and dress modestly and wear hats you couldn’t pay over eight dollars for.  I believe there was one once, but the poor thing never got any notice from either sex after she became—­a people, as you might say.’

“Well, I was going on to get off a few more things I’d got madded up to, but I caught the look in poor Hetty’s face, and it would have melted a stone.  Poor child!  There she was, wanting a certain man and willing to wear or not wear anything on earth that would nail him, and not knowing what would do it, and complicating her ignorance with meaningless worries about modesty and daringness and the freedom of her poor sex, that ain’t ever even deuce-low with one woman in a million.

“And right then, watching her distress, all at once I get my big inspiration—­it just flooded me like the sun coming up.  I don’t know if I’m like other folks, but things do come to me that way.  And not only was it a great truth, but it got me out of the hole of having to tell Hetty certain truths about herself that these Non Plush Ultras made all too glaring.

“‘Listen,’ I says:  ’You believe I’m your friend, don’t you?  And you believe anything I tell you is from the heart out and will probably have a grain of sense in it.  Well, here is an inspired thought:  Women won’t ever dress modestly like men do because men don’t want ’em to.  I never saw a man yet that did if he’d tell the truth, and so this here dark city stranger won’t be any exception.  Now, then, what do we see on Saturday next?  Why, we see this here gay throng sally forth for Stender’s Spring, the youth and beauty of Red Gap, including Mr. D., with his nice refined odour of Russia leather and bank bills of large size—­from fifties up—­that haven’t been handled much.  The crowd is of all sexes, technically, like you might say; a lot of nice, sweet girls along but dressed