“My dear doctor, my gloves are sixes, and perceive my shoes.” She put out for the old gentleman’s inspection a very pointed, high-heeled shoe, displaying at the same time the elaborate open-work of a silk stocking.
“Do you intend me to take that as an acknowledgment of the superiority of man?”
“Heavens, how argumentative you are!” Miss Ley laughed, for she was getting into her own particular element. “I knew you wished to quarrel with me. Do you really want my opinion?”
“Yes.”
“Well, it seems to me that if you take the very clever woman and set her beside an ordinary man, you prove nothing. That is how women mostly argue. We place George Eliot (who, by the way, had nothing of the woman but petticoats—and those not always) beside plain John Smith, and ask tragically if such a woman can be considered inferior to such a man. But that’s silly! The question I’ve been asking myself for the last five-and-twenty years is, whether the average fool of a woman is a greater fool than the average fool of a man.”
“And the answer?”
“Well, upon my word, I don’t think there’s much to choose between them.”
“Then you haven’t really an opinion on the subject at all?” cried the doctor.
“That is why I give it you.”
“Hm!” grunted Dr. Ramsay. “And how does that apply to the Craddocks?”