and turn about, now, I wouldn't say a word."

"I guess if that was the way of it, there'd never be more'n three in a
family, and it took a sight of people to fill up the world, starting
with the garden of Eden. Well, I must hurry, Susan. I won't be gone a
mite longer'n I can help."

As Susan removed her crimping pins, her agitation grew. The favor
Persis had asked so lightly, and she had granted so readily, took on a
new aspect as she considered it. Susan shared the respect of Clematis
for Joel Dale's intellectuality and stood rather in awe of his foibles.
Her hands trembled as she arranged her undulating locks in the fashion
ordinarily reserved for afternoons. Her cooking might not suit him.
Her efforts to be entertaining might not measure up to his lofty
standards. She quaked, picturing his possible displeasure. For this
courageous champion of the rights of womankind who did not hesitate to
call the Creator Himself to account for seeming injustice, became the
meekest of the meek when confronted with the sex from which oppressors
are made.

Susan's apprehensions were not so groundless as might be fancied. Joel
Dale was in a very bad humor after he had finished reading his sister's
note. Joel held the not unpopular theory that the supreme duty of
woman is to make some man comfortable. Religion and philanthropy were
legitimate diversions if not allowed to interfere with the higher
claim. Even the exercise of talent might be tendered a patronizing
approval, if this, too, knew its place. Joel was willing that Persis
should utilize her gifts in earning his living provided she did not
forget the complex ministrations involved in making him "comfortable."
He was ready to allow her to help her poorer neighbors, so that she was
never absent when he wanted her. But if that jealous divinity, his
Comfort, were denied its due, the indulgent brother was lost in the
affronted tyrant.

Poor Susan Fitzgerald found her tremors doubled by the sight of his
lowering face. "Mr. Dale, I've come up to keep house for you to-day,
seeing--seeing Persis has been called away." She blushed, realizing
that Joel was undoubtedly in the secret of that errand. After forty
years in a world where birth is the one inevitable human experience,
aside from death, she had never been able to rid herself of the
impression that it was essentially immodest.

Though the cloud of Jovian displeasure did not remove immediately from
Joel's brow,