“Why, yes,” he answered, “but never close. The most I’ve done is to go out to the edges of the cave sometimes and look out and see them, Outside Men and Women, in the distance. But of course, in one way or another, we Cave-men know all about them. And the thing we envy most in you Outside Men is the way you treat your women! By gee! You take no nonsense from them—you fellows are the real primordial, primitive men. We’ve lost it somehow.”
“Why, my dear fellow—” I began.
But the Cave-man, who had sat suddenly upright, interrupted.
“Quick! quick!” he said. “Hide that infernal mug! She’s coming. Don’t you hear!”
As he spoke I caught the sound of a woman’s voice somewhere in the outer passages of the cave.
“Now, Willie,” she was saying, speaking evidently to the Cave-child, “you come right along back with me, and if I ever catch you getting in such a mess as that again I’ll never take you anywhere, so there!”
Her voice had grown louder. She entered the cave as she spoke—a big-boned woman in a suit of skins leading by the hand a pathetic little mite in a rabbit-skin, with blue eyes and a slobbered face.
But as I was sitting the Cave-woman evidently couldn’t see me; for she turned at once to speak to her husband, unconscious of my presence.
“Well, of all the idle creatures!” she exclaimed. “Loafing here in the sand”—she gave a sniff—“and smoking—”
“My dear,” began the Cave-man.