"Yes, of course," said Miss Helen quickly. "In every country there are heroic women who rise to noble sacrifice on occasion. But they are exceptions. Books and travellers all speak of Japanese women as being quiet, soft-spoken, gentle, and meek. That picture doesn't apply to the American type of women."
"The training is different," I said, "but I think that at heart they are much the same."
"Well," said Miss Helen, "when it becomes the fashion for us to wear our hearts on our sleeves, perhaps we will appear gentle and meek. But," she added as she rose to go, "I don't believe that Japanese men think as you do. To-night, when I spoke of the book on Japan that I have been reading, and said that I believed the author was right when he declared that 'for modesty and gentle worth, Japanese women lead the world,' your husband smiled and said, 'Thank you,' as if he thought so too."
"Miss Helen," I said earnestly, "although our women are pictured as gentle and meek, and although Japanese men will not contradict it, nevertheless it is true that, beneath all the gentle meekness, Japanese women are like—like—volcanoes."
Miss Helen laughed.
"You are the only Japanese woman that I ever saw—except at the Exposition," she said, "and I cannot imagine your being like a volcano. However, I'll give in to your superior knowledge. You have had Molly Pitchers among your women, and flirts—that Lady What's-her-name whom you told me about the other day: she was a flirt, with a vengeance!—and now you say that you have volcanoes. Your demure-appearing countrywomen seem to have surprising possibilities. The next time I come over I'm going to challenge you to give me a specimen of a Japanese genuine woman's-rights woman."
"That is easy," I said, laughing in my turn. "A genuine woman's-rights woman is not one who wants her rights, but one who has them. And if that means the right to do men's work, I can easily give you a specimen. We have a whole island of women who do men's work from planting rice to making laws."
"What do the men do?"
"Cook, keep house, take care of the children, and do the family washing."
"You don't mean it!" exclaimed Miss Helen, and she sat down again.