"You see Percival feels that he must lard the gods into his intercourse

with you, Miss Elton," Mr. Davison interjected.

"That's because the gods have become nice homey things," retorted Dick.

"Even in the West we couldn't keep house without Dionysius assisted by

Hebe to superintend our afternoon teas, and Hercules as a patron of

baseball."

Madeline laughed and cast a grateful look in his direction.

"You see how pleasant it is to feel familiar with the gods so that you

can use them freely," she said.

"So you don't think it's necessary, in order to be clever, to despise

everything that's done nowadays, because the Greeks used up all the

ideas first?" asked Davison.

"Not at all. Nature conducts a vast renovating and cleaning

establishment, and whenever any old ideas look the least bit frayed or

soiled around the edges, pop, in they go, and come out French

dry-cleaned and as fresh as ever. They're sent home in a spick-span box

and you couldn't tell 'em from new."

"If we don't get anything new I hope that we, at least, get rid of some

of the old things--fears and superstitions," said Madeline. "Things that

are holy rites in one age are so apt to be holy frights in the next."

"Say, did you ever go down the streets of Boston and notice the number

of signs of palmists and astrologers and vacuum cures?" exclaimed

Davison. "But perhaps it ain't fair to take Boston for a standard."

Ellery, a true New Englander, stared at him in astonishment, as one who

heard sacred things lightly spoken of.

"Most of us can see how funny we are," Davison pursued.

"Can we?" murmured Dick.

"But Boston," he went on calmly, "has lost her sense of humor. She peers

down at everything she does and says, 'This is very serious.' That's why

she takes astrologers in earnest. They're in Boston. Anyway, I think you

were mighty sensible to come back to us, Miss Elton, rather than to stay

in the unmarried state, alias Massachusetts. A girl really has a much

better chance in the West."

"Yes, that's where Miss Elton showed a long head," said Dick with

evident glee.

"But really now, joking apart," Davison went on, having made his

opening, "don't you think it's unsettling to a girl to do too much

studying?"

"I hope you are not deeply agitated over the eradication of

womanliness," Madeline remonstrated. "Really, Mr. Davison, it isn't an

easy thing to stop being a woman--when you happen to be born one."

"But there are plenty of unwomanly women," he objected.

"That's true," she answered, "but I believe womanliness is killed--when

it is killed--not through the brain, but through the heart. It's not

knowledge, but hard-heartedness that makes the unwomanly woman."

She glanced up and met Norris' eyes. It was not easy for him to join in

the chatter of the others, but he was thinking how she illuminated her

own words. Manifestly she was not lacking in mind, and quite as

evidently her brain was only the antechamber of her nature. She gave him

the impression of "the heart at leisure from itself". There was the

unconsciousness of sheltered girlhood, but already, in bud, the

suggestion of that big type of woman who, as years mellow her, touches

with sympathy every life with which she comes in contact. What she now

was, promised more in the future, as though Fate said, "I'm not through

with her yet. I've plenty in reserve to go to her making."




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