“Pray!—pray!” she remonstrated—“I really must ask you to consider me a little, and avoid any conversation that borders on impropriety!”
“Impropriety!” I echoed aghast. “But all the girls cycle—”
“That is to say,” said the Ghost with asperity, “that all the girls have become shameless enough to sit astride on a couple of wheels and thus expose themselves to the gaze of the public. A hopeful state of things, truly! Well! Give me some more Progress!”
“Then,” I said, “there are plenty of girls who smoke and drive motor-cars, and bet on horse-races and gamble at ‘Bridge.’ You may object to this sort of thing, being so much behind the age,—but after all you must own that it brings them into free and constant companionship with the other sex.”
“It does!” said the Ghost of the Old-Fashioned Girl decidedly; “and such free and constant companionship breeds contempt on both sides! Now let me tell you something! Do you know what all the best men like most?”
I laughed and shook my head in the negative.
“They like what they cannot get!” said the Ghost of the Old-Fashioned Girl emphatically. “They like what is as unlike themselves as possible, and what will never be like themselves! The woman who is half a man will never be truly loved by a whole man—remember that!”
Again she settled her pretty muslin skirts, and nodded her fair head, “sunning over with curls,” well out of the interior of the Sedan-Chair.
“In the old unprogressive days,” she said, “we certainly did not have much liberty. We were held as too precious and too dear to be allowed to straggle about by ourselves like unvalued tramps in the highways and byways. We stayed very much in our own homes, and were proud and pleased to be there. We helped to make them beautiful. We loved our old-fashioned gardens. We played ‘battledore and shuttlecock,’ which is exactly the same as your ‘Ping-Pong’—save that you have a net in the middle of the table and play with balls—and we tossed our shuttlecocks up to the blue sky. We walked and rode, and found in these two exercises quite sufficient relaxation as well as development for our bodies, which, if you will please to remember, are not intended to be in the least like the bodies of men, and are by no means fitted for masculine gymnastics. We had neither cycles nor motors, we did not smoke, drink, bet, or gamble,—but—we were the models of womanliness, goodness, and purity for all the world!—and—we were loved!”
“And love was quite sufficient for you?” I asked hesitatingly.