“Well, then bring the pickings to him. That would be charity.”
“But charity is decency and wisdom is holding your tongue when you don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“If the people of Ballysantamalo are so decent, how is it that there are so many bachelors there? Do you think it right to have all the young women worrying their heads off reading trashy novels and doing all sorts of silly things like fixing their hair in a way that was never intended by nature and doing so for years and years and having nothing in the end but the trouble of it all?”
“Well, ’tis hard blaming the young men because every young lady you meet looks better to you than the last until you meet the next, and so you go from one to another until you’re so old that no one would marry you at all unless you had lots of money, a bad liver, and a shaky heart.”
“An old man without any sense, lots of money, a bad liver, and a shaky heart can always get a young lady to marry him,” said Micus, “though rheumatics, gout, and a wooden leg are just as good in such a case.”
“Every bit,” said Padna, “but there’s nothing like a weak constitution, a cold climate, and a tendency to pneumonia.”
“Old men are queer,” said Micus.
“They are,” said Padna, “and if they were all only half as wise as they think they are, then there’d be only young fools in the world. I don’t wonder a bit at the suffragettes. And a time will come when we won’t know men from women unless someone tells us so.”
“Wisha, ’tis my belief that there will be a great reaction some day, because women will never be able to stand the strain of doing what they please without encountering opposition. When a man falls into love he falls into trouble likewise, and when a woman isn’t in trouble you may be sure that there’s something wrong with her.”
“Well,” said Padna, “I think we will leave the women where the Devil left St. Peter,—”