Lois ventured still further. "I'm sure she needs friends like you, Jim."
There was a flare in his eye as he fumbled for the reins. "Well, she's only got to stoop and pick me up. Git along, Maud. Gee!" In obedience to his pull Maud arched her heavy neck and executed a sidewise movement uncertainly. "She knows I'm there," he continued, as the wagon creaked round. "Been there ever since she dropped me. Gee! Maud, gee! What you thinking of? I've never gone with any one else, Mrs. Masterman—not really gone with them. Rosie's been the only one so far. Well, good-by. And you will hold on to her, Mrs. Masterman, now, won't you?"
"Indeed I will, Jim—and—and you must do the same."
He threw her a rueful look over his shoulder, as Maud paced toward the gate. "Oh, I'm on the job every time."
The visit gave her a number of themes for thought, of which the most insistent was the power some women had of drawing out the love of men. For the rest of the day her gardening became no more than a mechanical directing of the setting out of seedlings, while she meditated on the problem of attractiveness.
How was it that women of small endowments could captivate men at sight, and that others of inexhaustible potentialities—she was not afraid to rank herself among them—went unrecognized and undesired? If Rosie Fay had been content with the honors of a local belle, she could have had her choice among half the young men in the village. What was her gift? What was the gift of that great sisterhood, comprising perhaps a third of the women in the world, to whom the majority of men turned instinctively, ignoring, or partially ignoring, the rest? Was it mere sheep-stupidity in men themselves that sent one where the others went, without capacity for individual discernment?—or was there a secret call that women like Rosie Fay could give which brought them too much of that for which other women were left famishing?
She put the question that evening to Dr. Sim Masterman, who had dropped in to see her, as he not infrequently did after his supper, now that Thor was away. Indeed, his visits were so regular as to make her afraid that with his curious social or spiritual second sight he suspected more in Thor's absence than zeal for the science of medicine.
"Why do men fall in love with inferior women?—become infatuated with them?"
He answered while sprawling before the library fire, his long legs apart, his fingers interlocked over his old tan waistcoat. "No use to discuss love with a woman. She can't get hold of it by the right end."
"Oh, but I thought that was just what she could do—one of the few capabilities universally conceded her."