"Oh, no," said Madge Hubert. "Of her innocence."
Acid couldn't have eaten the fiber out of Madge Hubert's emotional honesty. "Why, yes," she hurried on vehemently, "among all the professors' daughters here in town there isn't one of us who is innocent enough to do happily even once the things that 'Little Sister' does every day of her life. You are quite right. We are all furiously jealous."
With sudden professional earnestness she ran her fingers through the catalogue cards and picked out one and slapped it down in front of Sagner. "There!" she said. "That's the book that explains all about it. It says that jealousy is an emotion that is aroused only by business competition, which accounts, of course, for the fact that, socially speaking, you very rarely find any personal enmity between men. There are so many, many different kinds of businesses for men, that interests very seldom conflict—so that the broker resents only the broker, and the minister resents only the minister, and the merchant resents only the merchant. Why, Bertus Sagner," she broke off abruptly, "you fairly idolize your chemistry friend here, and Lennart for history, and Dudley for mathematics, and all the others, and you glory in their achievements, and pray for their successes. But if there were another biology man here in town, you'd tear him and his methods tooth and nail, day and night. Yes, you would!—though you'd cover your hate a foot deep with superficial courtesies and 'professional etiquette.'"
She began to laugh. "Oh, the book is very wise," she continued more lightly. "It goes on to say that woman's only business in the whole wide world is love—that Love is really the one and only, the Universal Profession for Women—so that every mortal feminine creature, from the brownest gypsy to the whitest queen, is in brutal, acute competition with her neighbor. It's funny, isn't it!" she finished brightly.
"Very funny," growled Sagner.
"So you see," she persisted, "that we girls are jealous of 'Little Sister' in just about the same way in which an old-fashioned, rather conservative department store would be jealous of the first ten-cent store that came to town." A sudden rather fine white pride paled suddenly in her cheeks. "It isn't, you understand," she said, "it isn't because the ten-cent store's rhinestone comb, or tinsel ribbon, or slightly handled collar really competes with the other store's plainer but possibly honester values, but—because in the long run the public's frittered taste and frittered small change is absolutely bound to affect the general receipts of the more conservative store."
"And it isn't," she added hastily, "it isn't, you know, because we're not used to men. There isn't one of us—from the time we were sixteen years old—who hasn't been quite accustomed to entertain anywhere from three to a dozen men every evening of her life. But we can't entertain them the way 'Little Sister' does." A hot, red wave of mortification flooded her face. "We tried it once," she confessed, "and it didn't work. Just before the last winter party seven of us girls got together and deliberately made up our minds to beat 'Little Sister' at her own game. Wasn't it disgusting of us to start out actually and deliberately with the intention of being just a little wee bit free and easy with men?"
"How did it work?" persisted Sagner, half agrin.
The color flushed redder and redder into Madge Hubert's cheeks.
"I went to the party with the new psychology substitute," she continued bravely, "and as I stepped into the carriage I called him 'Fred'—and he looked as though he thought I was demented. But fifteen minutes afterward I heard 'Little Sister' call him 'Psyche'—and he laughed." She began to laugh herself.