sensible. Every one put me down for a 'nut.' My mother called me
'Trixie.' No girl can do well on a name like that. Teachers passed me
from hand to hand saying, 'Trixie is such a mischief!' I had a
reputation to sustain.

"Then mother and father married me off to Mr. Tweed because he was so
sensible, and I needed a firm hand, they said. I began everything in
life with a handicap. Name and appearance have always been against me.
No one can look sensible with a nose that turns straight up, and I
will have bright colors to wear--I was brought up on wincey, color of
mud, and all these London-smoke, battleship-gray colors make me sick.
I want reds and blues and greens, and I am gradually working into
them."

She held out a dainty foot as she spoke, exhibiting a bright-green
stocking striped in gold.

"But mind you, for all I am so frivolous, I am not a fool exactly. All
I ask is to have my fling, and I've had it now for three whole months.
When William was at home I never could sit up and read one minute, and
so the first night he was away I burned the light all night just to
feel wicked! It was great to be able to let it burn. I've gone to bed
early every night for a week to make up for it. What do you think of
that? It is just born in me, and I can't help it. If William had
stayed at home, this would never have showed out in me. I would have
gone on respectable and steady. But this is one of the prices we pay
for bringing up women to be men's chattels, with some one always
placed in authority over them. When the authority is removed, there's
the devil to pay!"