“Honestly, girls, I’m serious about this sociology. When you’re almost through college, you look back over the work you’ve had, and wish you could remember more about it, and are pretty sure that you’ll remember a lot less before long, and anyway that a lot of it hasn’t much to do with real life. Greek prose, for instance, and trig. and—syllogisms.”
“I certainly hope I shan’t encounter any syllogisms in real life,” put in Straight fervently. “Because if I do, there’s one thing certain; they’ll be sure to come out wrong and leave me in a fix.”
“But you’re glad of all the poetry you’ve learned to like,” went on Fluffy, “and of the serious reading you’ve done and got off your mind for good. And the history and civil government will come in handy in polite conversation. But for real, downright, sit-up-and-take-notice interest, give me this sociology business. I tell you it sets a person thinking! If it didn’t make me sort of faint to poke around in dirty, smelly places, I believe I should take up settlement work next winter. Lots of the girls in the class want to.”
“Is sociology all about poor people?” inquired Timmy Wentworth. “Because I think myself that rich people are just exactly as interesting. Unless poor people are funny enough to make you laugh I think they’re often very dull indeed. Consequently I don’t believe settlement work is all fun and frolic.”
“It’s about both rich and poor people,” explained Fluffy patiently. “But it hasn’t anything much to do with their being bright or stupid. That comes in psych. mostly—people’s minds. It’s more about,—well, their all getting their rights, you know, and having a fair chance.”
“Oh, yes, and the woman question means woman’s rights, I suppose,” piped up Susanna Hart, still scornfully.
“Well, you want your rights, don’t you?” Straight demanded, coming to Fluffy’s rescue, as she always did the minute an outsider attacked her sister. “I never noticed you giving away bath hours or chances at library books, and your reputation as a freshman roommate——” Straight paused and smiled meaningly around the circle. “No use raking up last year’s scandal,” she ended mildly, perceiving from Susanna’s flushed face that she had scored.
“Well, but that’s different, Straight,” protested Susanna, humbled, but not ready to yield her point. “Of course I take what’s coming to me. I certainly don’t intend to lie down and be walked over by—by anybody.” Susanna clenched her small hands wrathfully, as she remembered the tyrannical last year’s roommate. “I didn’t mean to be more disagreeable about it than I had to, but I want——”
“Exactly,” popped in Straight coolly. “You want your rights.”
“Well, I don’t want to vote,” snapped Susanna, “and I think suffragists are horrid bores.”