"You haven't heard the notion I was raised to—yet," she said.
"No."
Marcel was satisfied with the return of her smile.
"Would you like to?"
"Sure."
The girl laughed.
"I guess it's not as simple as yours," she said. "A woman's reason isn't generally simple. You see, she musses up feelings with argument which generally confuse the issue. Guess a woman's life is mostly a thing of confusion. You see, she started bad, though it wasn't her fault. When the folks, who ought to know better, started in to make man before his mother you can't wonder it's that way. Now I was raised to believe man is woman's rightful protector. There's women who reckon she's got man left standing when it comes to helping things along. But she's the sort of woman who always cooks her own favourite dish when she reckons to give her man a real treat. There's the other woman who's so sure man is her rightful protector that she's not content to wait around for his protection. She gets right out and grabs it, along with anything else he's foolish enough to leave within her reach. Then there's the woman who shouts around that she doesn't need protecting anyway. She mostly ends up with grabbing all the man-protection that happens to be lying around, without worrying whose 'claim' she's jumping. But to get back to the notion I was raised to, it seems to me that man is surely a woman's rightful protector, but there isn't a thing on earth can make me see that she's the right to take any sort of protection he hasn't the right to give. That sort of woman's a vampire. And vampires are things I'd like to see drowned so deep they can't ever resurrect. If I took your pelts I'd be a vampire for taking something you haven't the right to give. They're your trade, and I guess out of your trade you've got to pay your outfit of Eskimo. Do you see? To my way of thinking those furs are not yours to give, just because you find a fool girl squealing for three thousand dollars of trade. But say," she added, with a warmth of real feeling in her smiling eyes, "I thank you for the thought. I thank you right from the bottom of my heart."
Marcel remained quite undisturbed. He sat deliberately puffing at his absurdly ornamented pipe, his honest eyes meditatively smiling. The girl's rejection of his offer only made him the more determined. At last he stirred, and sat up cross-legged, and, removing his pipe, pointed his words with its stem, as though to drive them more fully home.
"That's all right," he said. "I'm making no kick on that. It just makes me feel how sore you need those pelts, and how right I am to want to hand 'em to you. I've told you what I fancy doing. Now we'll form a committee and negotiate. Folks always form committees when they can't agree, and then they can't agree worse. Committees always elect one of their members chairman, and he has a casting vote. We're a committee of two, so we'll elect a chairman, and that'll make three—chairman with casting vote. I'll elect myself chairman. That way we'll have no sort of difficulty. All in favour, etc." He thrust up both hands and his pipe while he boyishly gazed up at them with a triumphant smile.
"Carried unanimously," he cried. "Now I've two says to your one——"