firmness, "if I liked to
put my foot down--"

"Exactly, exactly," I said. "It's the same way with us!"

"Is it now!" he questioned with interest. "I had imagined that it was
all different Outside. You're from the Outside, aren't you? I guessed
you must be from the skins you wear."

"Have you never been Outside?" I asked.

"No fear!" said the Cave-man. "Not for mine! Down here in the caves,
clean underground and mostly in the dark, it's all right. It's nice and
safe." He gave a sort of shudder. "Gee! You fellows out there must
have your nerve to go walking around like that on the outside rim of
everything, where the stars might fall on you or a thousand things
happen to you. But then you Outside Men have got a natural elemental
fearlessness about you that we Cave-men have lost. I tell you, I was
pretty scared when I looked up and saw you standing there."

"Had you never seen any Outside Men?" I asked.

"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.

"Don't you my-dear me!" she answered. "Look at this place! Nothing
tidied up yet and the day half through! Did you put