To us who adopt the proprieties as a profession and wear respectability for a mantle, unauthorized impulses in any form are to be contemned, and Mariana, flushed with generous desires, was as unacceptable as Mariana submerged in self.
After paying a couple of calls the girl's spirit of altruism evaporated. It was warm and close, and the sun made her head ache, while the fatigue from the unusual exercise produced a fit of ill-humor. She wondered why she had left her room, and then looked at her soiled gloves and regretted her encounter with the boot-black. The recollection of the pot of primroses and the week's car-fare caused her even more annoyance.
A block from The Gotham she ran upon Jerome Ardly, and her irritation vanished.
"Hello!" he ejaculated, "you are as white as a sheet. Too much September sun. Had luncheon?"
"Yes," responded Mariana; and she added, plaintively, "I am so tired. I have walked myself to death—and all for nothing."
"Form of monomania?" he inquired, sympathetically. "Nothing short of arrant idiocy would take any one out for nothing on a day like this."
Mariana looked at him and laughed. "I have been paying calls," she said. "I went to see Mrs. Simpson and she told me all about the rights of women. It was very instructive."
"If they resemble the rights of man," remarked Ardly, "they are not to be seen, heard, or felt."
"Ah, but it is all the fault of men," responded Mariana; "she told me so. She said that men were the only things that kept us back."
Ardly laughed.