“Oh, yes—he has to for his nerves. He has an auto, but he thinks that ridin’ a wheel almost cured him. He used to be dretful nervous and weak. He can’t bear bein’ shut up in the house all the time.”
“Well,” sez I, “didn’t you think that it helped you to ride? Your Ma told me that you felt like a new creature after you had had your wheel for a month.”
“Oh, yes, Aunt Samantha,” sez she, “it did help me more than I can tell, and you don’t know how I have missed it; I have felt that it would have been such a help to me while I was makin’ these Christmas gifts.”
“Well, why under the sun and moon, to say nothin’ of the stars and meteors, haven’t you kept on with what you knew helped you so?”
“Oh, Louis doesn’t approve of my ridin’, and he wuz bitterly opposed to my wearin’ short skirts; he considered it immodest, and I had jest about as soon not go at all as to go in my long skirts. The last time I rode, to please Louis I wore my long dress, and right in the middle of the village my dress wound round the wheel, and it wound my dress right up offen me, and I fell over onto my head.”
“I suppose he considered that more modest?” sez I, dry as a chip.
“He is dretful opposed to short skirts,” sez she; “he talked awful to me about ’em.”
“Why don’t you insist on his wearin’ his bath-robe on his wheel? Let him try it once, and then see. Why didn’t you say that you wuz shocked at the sight of his long limbs, and favored the Eastern garb for men? Your dress wuz modest and mejum, it come to the tops of your shoes, and you wore a divided skirt of the same cloth; you can tell him, from me, your dress wuz jest twice as modest as his’n.”
“Oh,” sez she, “I wouldn’t think of criticisin’ his dress.”
“Why not, as long as he criticises yours? But as for your dress and his’n, they’re both all right. And now do you, within the next fifteen minutes, don that garb, and go out on that wheel and take a good long ride.”