“Say, did you ever go down the streets of Boston and notice the number of signs of palmists and astrologers and vacuum cures?” exclaimed Davison. “But perhaps it ain’t fair to take Boston for a standard.”
Ellery, a true New Englander, stared at him in astonishment, as one who heard sacred things lightly spoken of.
“Most of us can see how funny we are,” Davison pursued.
“Can we?” murmured Dick.
“But Boston,” he went on calmly, “has lost her sense of humor. She peers down at everything she does and says, ‘This is very serious.’ That’s why she takes astrologers in earnest. They’re in Boston. Anyway, I think you were mighty sensible to come back to us, Miss Elton, rather than to stay in the unmarried state, alias Massachusetts. A girl really has a much better chance in the West.”
“Yes, that’s where Miss Elton showed a long head,” said Dick with evident glee.
“But really now, joking apart,” Davison went on, having made his opening, “don’t you think it’s unsettling to a girl to do too much studying?”
“I hope you are not deeply agitated over the eradication of womanliness,” Madeline remonstrated. “Really, Mr. Davison, it isn’t an easy thing to stop being a woman—when you happen to be born one.”
“But there are plenty of unwomanly women,” he objected.
“That’s true,” she answered, “but I believe womanliness is killed—when it is killed—not through the brain, but through the heart. It’s not knowledge, but hard-heartedness that makes the unwomanly woman.”