“Well, I shouldn’t wear skirts,” snapped Xanthippe.  “If a man’s wife can’t borrow some of her husband’s clothing to reduce her peril to a minimum, what is the use of having a husband?  When I take to the bicycle, which, in spite of all Socrates can say, I fully intend to do, I shall have a man’s wheel, and I shall wear Socrates’ old dress-clothes.  If Hades doesn’t like it, Hades may suffer.”

“I don’t see how Socrates’ clothes will help you,” observed Ophelia.  “He wore skirts himself, just like all the other old Greeks.  His toga would be quite as apt to catch in the gear as your skirts.”

Xanthippe looked puzzled for a moment.  It was evident that she had not thought of the point which Ophelia had brought up—­strong-minded ladies of her kind are apt sometimes to overlook important links in such chains of evidence as they feel called upon to use in binding themselves to their rights.

“The women of your day were relieved of that dress problem, at any rate,” laughed Queen Elizabeth.

“The women of my day,” retorted Xanthippe, “in matters of dress were the equals of their husbands—­in my family particularly; now they have lost their rights, and are made to confine themselves still to garments like those of yore, while man has arrogated to himself the sole and exclusive use of sane habiliments.  However, that is apart from the question.  I was saying that I shall have a man’s wheel, and shall wear Socrates’ old dress-clothes to ride it in, if Socrates has to go out and buy an old dress-suit for the purpose.”

The Queen arched her brows and looked inquiringly at Xanthippe for a moment.

“A magnificent old maid was lost to the world when you married,” she said.  “Feeling as you do about men, my dear Xanthippe, I don’t see why you ever took a husband.”

“Humph!” retorted Xanthippe.  “Of course you don’t.  You didn’t need a husband.  You were born with something to govern.  I wasn’t.”

“How about your temper?” suggested Ophelia, meekly.

Xanthippe sniffed frigidly at this remark.

“I never should have gone crazy over a man if I’d remained unmarried forty thousand years,” she retorted, severely.  “I married Socrates because I loved him and admired his sculpture; but when he gave up sculpture and became a thinker he simply tried me beyond all endurance, he was so thoughtless, with the result that, having ventured once or twice to show my natural resentment, I have been handed down to posterity as a shrew.  I’ve never complained, and I don’t complain now; but when a woman is married to a philosopher who is so taken up with his studies that when he rises in the morning he doesn’t look what he is doing, and goes off to his business in his wife’s clothes, I think she is entitled to a certain amount of sympathy.”

“And yet you wish to wear his,” persisted Ophelia.

“Turn about is fair-play,” said Xanthippe.  “I’ve suffered so much on his account that on the principle of averages he deserves to have a little drop of bitters in his nectar.”