She went on: "We women have been shut out from the sports too long—I mean sports in the sun. The men have had the best of it. All the swimming, all the boating, wheeling, all the grand, wild life; now we're going to have a part."
The young ladies clustered about with flushed, excited faces while their teacher planted her flag and claimed new territory for women.
Miss Powell herself grew conscious, and flushed and paused abruptly.
Mrs. Blakesly effervesced in admiring astonishment. "Well, well! I didn't know you could make a speech."
"I didn't mean to do so," she replied.
"Go on! Go on!" everybody called out, but she turned away to show some other apparatus.
"Wasn't she fine?" exclaimed Mrs. Blakesly to Ware.
"Beyond praise," he replied. She went at once to communicate her morsel of news to her husband, and at length to Miss Powell.
The company passed out into other rooms until no one was left but Mrs. Blakesly, the professor, and Ware. Miss Powell was talking again, and to Ware mainly. Ware was thoughtful, Miss Powell radiant.
"I didn't know what life was till I could do that." She took up a large dumb-bell and, extending it at arm's length, whirled it back and forth. Her forearm, white and smooth, swelled into strong action, and her supple hands had the unwavering power and pressure of an athlete, and withal Ware thought: "She is feminine. Her physical power has not coarsened her; it has enlarged her life, but left her entirely womanly."