"Why, you're coming round to my side!" exclaimed Marion. "I should really like to know where you are?"
"I am wherever I can get nearest to the truth of things," said Ray, smiling.
"That," said Sunderline, "is one of the specialties that is getting righted. Women are being paid more, in proportion, for intellectual service, and the nearer you come to the pure mental power, the nearer you come to equality in recompense. A woman who writes a clever book, or paints a good picture, or sculptures a good statue, can get as much for her work as a man. But where time is paid for,—where it is personal service,—the old principle at the root of things comes in. Men open up the wildernesses, men sail the seas, work the mines, forge the iron, build the cities, defend the nations while they grow, do the physical work of the world, make way for all the finishings of education and opportunity that come afterward, and that put women where they are to-day. And men must be counted for such things. It is man's work that has made these women's platforms. They have the capital of strength, and capital draws interest. The right of the strongest isn't necessarily oppression by the strongest. That's the way I look at it. And I think that what women lose in claim they gain in privilege."
"Only when women come to knock about the world without any claims, they don't seem to get much privilege," said Marion.
"I don't know. It seems rude to say so, perhaps, but they find a world ready made to knock round in, don't they? And it is because there's so much done that they couldn't have done themselves, that they find the chances waiting for them that they do. And the chances are multiplying with civilization, all the time. You see the question really goes back to first conditions, and lies upon the fact that first conditions may come back any day,—do come back, here and there, continually. Put man and woman together on the primitive earth, and it is the man that has got to subdue it; the woman is what Scripture calls her,—the helpmeet. And my notion is that if everything was right, a woman never should have to 'knock round alone.' It isn't the real order of Providence. I think Providence has been very much interfered with."
"There are widows," said Rachel, gently.
"Yes; and the 'fatherless and the widows' are everybody's charge to care for. I said—if things were right. I wish the energy was spent in bringing round the right that is used up in fitting things to the wrong."
"They say there are too many women in the world altogether!" said Marion, squarely.
"I guess not—for all the little children," said Frank Sunderline; and his tone sounded suddenly sweet and tender.
He was helping them out of the car, now, at the village station, and they went up the long steps to the street. All three walked on without more remark, for a little way. Then Marion broke out in her odd fashion,—