start you easy,' I says; 'learn you to bake a batch of bread or do a tub
of washing--something simple--and there's Chet Timmins, waiting to give
you a glorious future as wife and mother and helpmeet.'

"She just give me one look as cold as all arctics and says, 'It's
repellent'--that's all, just 'repellent.' I see I was up against it. No
good talking. Sometimes it comes over me like a flash when not to talk.
It does to some women. So I affected a light manner and pretended to
laugh it off, just as if I didn't see scandal threatening--think of
having it talked about that a niece of my own raising was a leader of
the New Dawn!

"'All right,' I says, 'only, of course, Chet Timmins is a good friend
and neighbour of mine, even if he is a male, so I hope you won't mind
his dropping in now and again from time to time, just to say howdy and
eat a meal.' And she flusters me again with her coolness.

"'No,' she says, 'I won't mind, but I know what you're counting on, and
it won't do either of you any good. I'm above the appeal of a man's mere
presence,' she says, 'for I've thrown off the age--long subjection; but
I won't mind his coming. I shall delight to study him. They're all
alike, and one specimen is as good as another for that. But neither of
you need expect anything,' she says, 'for the wrongs of my sisters have
armoured me against the grossness of mere sex appeal.' Excuse me for
getting off such things, but I'm telling you how she talked.

"'Oh, shucks!' I says to myself profanely, for all at once I saw she
wasn't talking her own real thoughts but stuff she'd picked up from the
well-known lady friends of Mrs. W.B. Hemingway. I was mad all right; but
the minute I get plumb sure mad I get wily. 'I was just trying you out,'