"It isn't fair to the men who marry us. Marriage is supposed to be a partnership—husband and wife as partners. But if the man knew as little about his part of the job as the woman generally does about hers when she gets married, most married couples would be in the poorhouse in a year."
"That sounds old-fashioned, but I don't believe it is, somehow."
"It certainly is not. It's what I try to keep in mind. That's why we don't go in much for talking about votes for women. I'm not saying we ought not to vote, or that we ought to. But I do think there are a lot of things we ought to think about first. Times have changed a lot, but after all women and men don't change so very much. Or, at least, they ought not to change."
"I think I see what you're driving at. You mean that your great grandmother and mine probably spun cloth and made clothes for themselves and most of the family, and did all sorts of other things that we never think of doing?"
"Yes. And I don't mean that we ought to go back to that. A man can buy a better shirt in a shop now for less money than you or I would have to spend in making him one. But there are plenty of other things we could do in a house that we never seem to think of, somehow."
"I don't see how you think of all that! I thought I'd spent a lot of time studying the Camp Fire, but I never got hold of those ideas."
"Oh, they're not all mine—not a bit of it! You ought to talk to Mrs. Chester, our Chief Guardian. She'd make you think, and she'd make you believe you were doing it all by yourself, too."
"Yes, she's wonderful. I don't know her very well, but I hope to see more of her this winter. I want to be Guardian of a Camp Fire of my own. I've had just enough of the work, substituting for other girls, to want to spend a lot more time at it."
"You'll get the chance all right—don't worry about that! It's Guardians we need more than anything else. It isn't as easy as you would think to get girls and women who've got the patience and the time for the work. But that's chiefly because they don't know how fascinating it is, and how much more fun there is in doing it than in spending all your time going about having what people call a 'good time.' I've never had such a good time in my life as since we got up this Manasquan Camp Fire."
"Well, I wish I could stay with you, and go on this wonderful tramp with you. But I've got a lot of girls coming up to visit me, and I've simply got to be there to entertain them. So if you're really going to stay, and don't need me any more, I'll have to be getting Andrew to take me back home again."