"Mark you," she said, "we have always this advantage over you--we can at
any time step into ease and competence, where you must labour patiently for
it. A little weeping, a little wheedling, a little self-degradation, a
little careful use of our advantages, and then some man will say: "Come,
be my wife!" With good looks and youth marriage is easy to attain. There
are men enough; but a woman who has sold herself, even for a ring and a new
name, need hold her skirt aside for no creature in the street. They both
earn their bread in one way. Marriage for love is the beautifulest
external symbol of the union of souls; marriage without it is the
uncleanliest traffic that defiles the world." She ran her little finger
savagely along the topmost bar, shaking off the dozen little dewdrops that
still hung there. "And they tell us we have men's chivalrous attention!"
she cried. "When we ask to be doctors, lawyers, law-makers, anything but
ill-paid drudges, they say--No; but you have men's chivalrous attention;
now think of that and be satisfied! What would you do without it?"

The bitter little silvery laugh, so seldom heard, rang out across the
bushes. She bit her little teeth together.

"I was coming up in Cobb & Co.'s the other day. At a little wayside hotel
we had to change the large coach for a small one. We were ten passengers,
eight men and two women. As I sat in the house the gentlemen came and
whispered to me, 'There is not room for all in the new coach, take your
seat quickly.' We hurried out, and they gave me the best seat, and covered
me with rugs, because it was drizzling. Then the last passenger came
running up to the coach--an old woman with a wonderful bonnet, and a black
shawl pinned with a yellow pin.

"'There is no room,' they said; 'you must wait till next week's coach takes
you up;' but she climbed on to the step, and held on at the window with