“You know,” said the boy impatiently, “women’s sufferings and votes and things, and Parliament and injustice and that.”
“Suffrage, suffrage, you mean suffrage!” cried the schoolmaster.
“It’s all the same, that’s what they talk about, and inferiority and that. One can’t help being born a boy, can one?”
“Help it!” exclaimed the schoolmaster. “Why, who’d be born anything else if they had their choice?”
The boy’s pale cheeks flushed. “Do you really mean that?” he asked eagerly.
“Of course I do. It’s a glorious thing to be a boy who’s going to be a man.”
“They don’t think so, they say it’s much better to be a girl; they’re sorry I’m a boy.”
“Oh, come,” the schoolmaster said chaffingly. “You can’t expect me to believe that. They may say so in a kind of joke, but they don’t really mean it.”
“Do you know my aunts?”
“Well, no; but I expect they are very like other ladies, who often say what they don’t mean.”