“Afterwards we’d have, as I advise you to do, forgotten all about it.”
“Then you don’t pin your faith too closely to this venerable creed of yours, Pylea?”
“We expect our fathers, husbands, and brothers to venerate the gods, and attend to their religious, with their other domestic duties, while we do the thinking and the fighting,” she answered significantly.
“Do you know, Pylea, you belong to the emancipated sex. In my land the order is reversed.”
“Ah, so it might be in mine, if our men were like you and your followers. But look at ours. Could any of them bend my bow or handle my spear? No; they are too fond of their couches, their pipes, their dinners, and their wines. They like to spend their time gossiping and making pretty things. All the exercise they care for is flogging the slaves, so we leave them to what they like best—to look after the children, make poetry, pictures, and pretty carvings, and discuss new dishes, while they fill their empty heads with smoke and strong drink.”
“A great number of our men also are fond of the vices you charge yours with, Pylea,” answered Ned, laughing at her indulgent contempt of the lords of creation. “They also drink, smoke, and spend a good deal of time discussing fine dishes and works of art and literature. When they can paint or carve they get mighty conceited about it; but, as a rule, they don’t practise the domestic virtues you speak about.”
“Who does this, when there are no slaves?”
“Our women.”
“And who does the thinking?”
“Also a good many of our women.”