"Then I'll enlighten your egregious density. ...The boys--those who've
got the stuff in them--strike out for the cities to make their
everlasting fortunes. Generally they do it, too."

"The same as you."

"The same as me," assented Kellogg, unperturbed. "But the yaps, the
Jaspers, stay there and clerk in father's store. After office-hours
they put on their very best mail-order clothes and parade up and down
Main Street, talking loud and flirting obviously with the girls. The
girls haven't much else to do; they don't find it so easy to get away.
A few of 'em escape to boarding-schools and colleges, where they meet
and marry young men from the cities, but the majority of them have to
stay at home and help mother--that's a tradition. If there are two
children or more, the boys get the chance every time; the girls stay
home to comfort the old folks in their old age. Why, by the time
they're old enough to think of marrying--and they begin young, for
that's about the only excitement they find available--you won't find a
small country town between here and the Mississippi where there aren't
about four girls to every boy."

"It's a horrible thought ..."

"You'd think so if you knew what the boys were like. There isn't one in
ten that a girl with any sense or self-respect could force herself to
marry if she ever saw anything better. Do you begin to see my drift?"

"I do not. But go on drifting."