"I wish some of the people who used to know Cecil Harshaw in England could see him now," said Kitty.
"What did he do in England?" I asked.
"He didn't hammer stovepipes and carry kitchen-boxes and cut fire-wood, you know."
"Don't you like to see men use their muscle?" I asked her. "Very few of them are reflective to any purpose at his age."
"Why, how old, or how young, do you take him to be?"
"I think you spoke of him as a boy, if I remember."
"If I called him a boy, it was out of charity for his behavior. He's within six months of my own age."
"And you don't call yourself a girl any longer!" I laughed.
"It's always 'girls' and 'men,'" she said. "If Cecil Harshaw is not a man now, he never will be."
I didn't know, I said, what the point at issue was between us. I thought Cecil Harshaw was very much a man, as men go, and I saw nothing, frankly, so very far amiss with his behavior.