"What seems to be the matter?"
"It's them women," said Doolittle.
Uncle Martin turned inquiringly to George: "The tender flowers?" he suggested.
"Look here, Uncle Martin," said George, who had had a good deal of this sort of thing to bear, "I don't understand you. Do you believe in woman suffrage?"
Uncle Martin contemplated a new crumpling of his long-suffering cap before he answered. "Yes and no, George. I believe in it in the same way that I believe in old age and death. I can't avoid them by denying their existence."
"But you fight against them, and put them off as long as you can."
"But I yield a little to them, too, George. What is it? Has Genevieve become a convert to suffrage?"
"Has Genevieve—has my wife——"
Then George remembered that his uncle was an older man and that chivalry is not limited to the treatment of the weaker sex.
"No," he said with a calm hardly less magnificent than the tempest would have been, "no, Uncle Martin, Genevieve has not become a suffragist."