"Only a little." I answered; "they were beginning to ask for votes
and equality."

"That's it," said my acquaintance, "I couldn't think of the word.
Your women, I believe, were something awful, were they not? Covered
with feathers and skins and dazzling colours made of dead things all
over them? And they laughed, did they not, and had foolish teeth, and
at any moment they could inveigle you into one of those contracts!
Ugh!"

He shuddered.

"Asbestos," I said (I knew no other name to call him), as I turned on
him in wrath, "Asbestos, do you think that those jelly-bag Equalities
out on the street there, with their ash-barrel suits, can be compared
for one moment with our unredeemed, unreformed, heaven-created,
hobble-skirted women of the twentieth century?"

Then, suddenly, another thought flashed into my mind--

"The children," I said, "where are the children? Are there any?"

"Children," he said, "no! I have never heard of there being any such
things for at least a century. Horrible little hobgoblins they must
have been! Great big faces, and cried constantly! And _grew_, did
they not? Like funguses! I believe they were longer each year than
they had been the last, and----"

I rose.