“The days of Abraham are past!” she said.
“What do you mean by that?”
“I mean that the Lord doesn’t favour women-crushers so much as in the times of Moses and Aaron,” she murmured lazily. “You see, Abraham was such a ‘master in his own house’ that, after making all the use he could of Hagar, he turned her out into the wilderness to starve. Plenty of modern Abrahams would do the same thing with all the pleasure in life—but—it’s likely the modern Hagars are more than a match for them! And I’m glad—oh, so glad, that women are going to have their day—at last!”
The Philosopher had stuffed his pipe with tobacco while she spoke, and now prodded it in with a very yellow finger. He looked uneasily about him for matches, but she did not offer to find them. He discovered them presently and lit his ‘fragrant weed’ without asking her permission.
“Women are going to have their day!” he echoed, ironically. “What sort of a day do you suppose it will be? Confusion worse confounded!”
She was silent.
“Woman’s day,” he went on sententiously, “means Man. Man at morn,—man at noon,—man at night. Woman adores man,—licks his boots metaphorically whenever he gives her the chance. A Man and a new Hat—that’s enough for Woman’s day!”
She laughed.
“What a funny old person you are!” she exclaimed. “You have such fossil ideas!—positively fossil!—embedded in rock!—and they’ll never change! That’s the worst of being over-learned in one direction,—I’m sure it narrows the mind!”
He began to feel irritated,—yes, really irritated with this bunch of blue and white femininity seated opposite to him in such graceful ease.