“Not to entertain me, but because I am interested, my dear, will you tell me about your particular sunbonnet?” asked Mrs. Jardine.

Kate sat staring across the blue lake with wide eyes, a queer smile twisting her lips.  At last she said slowly:  “Well, then, my sunbonnet is in my trunk.  I’m not so far away from it but that it still travels with me.  It’s blue chambray, made from pieces left from my first pretty dress.  It is ruffled, and has white stitching.  I made it myself.  The head that it fits is another matter.  I didn’t make that, or its environment, or what was taught it, until it was of age, and had worked out its legal time of service to pay for having been a head at all.  But my head is now free, in my own possession, ready to go as fast and far on the path of life as it develops the brains to carry it.  You’d smile if I should tell you what I’d ask of life, if I could have what I want.”

“I scarcely think so.  Please tell me.”

“You’ll be shocked,” warned Kate.

“Just so it isn’t enough to set my heart rocking again,” said Mrs. Jardine.

“We’ll stop before that,” laughed Kate.  “Then if you will have it, I want of life by the time I am twenty a man of my stature, dark eyes and hair, because I am so light.  I want him to be honest, forceful, hard working, with a few drops of the milk of human kindness in his heart, and the same ambitions I have.”

“And what are your ambitions?” asked Mrs. Jardine.

“To own, and to cultivate, and to bring to the highest state of efficiency at least two hundred acres of land, with convenient and attractive buildings and pedigreed stock, and to mother at least twelve perfect physical and mental boys and girls.”

“Oh, my soul!” cried Mrs. Jardine, falling back in her chair, her mouth agape.  “My dear, you don’t mean that?  You only said that to shock me.”

“But why should I wish to shock you?  I sincerely mean it,” persisted Kate.

“You amazing creature!  I never heard a girl talk like that before,” said Mrs. Jardine.

“But you can’t look straight ahead of you any direction you turn without seeing a girl working for dear life to attract the man she wants; if she can’t secure him, some other man; and in lieu of him, any man at all, in preference to none.  Life shows us woman on the age-old quest every day, everywhere we go; why be so secretive about it?  Why not say honestly what we want, and take it if we can get it?  At any rate, that is the most important thing inside my sunbonnet.  I knew you’d be shocked.”

“But I am not shocked at what you say, I agree with you.  What I am shocked at is your ideals.  I thought you’d want to educate yourself to such superiority over common woman that you could take the platform, and backed by your splendid physique, work for suffrage or lecture to educate the masses.”

“I think more could be accomplished with selected specimens, by being steadily on the job, than by giving an hour to masses.  I’m not much interested in masses.  They are too abstract for me; I prefer one stern reality.  And as for Woman’s Rights, if anybody gives this woman the right to do anything more than she already has the right to do, there’ll surely be a scandal.”