us going to have a
vote? He! he! Ha! ha! It fairly maddens 'em to see us getting a bit of
freedom--makes 'em that wild they don't know how to be sneerin' an'
nasty enough. Every one of us will just roll up an' use our power now
we've got it,--they've kep' our necks under their heel long enough."

"I wasn't thinkin' of the vote at present," said Grandma Clay. "I was
just off to see you about what our noble nibbs have been doin' in that
old Gawling's orchard; but I beat Andrew already in case. What did you
think of 'em?"

Mrs Bray put back her handsome head, decorated by an extremely
fashionable hat, and laughed boisterously.

"Fancy the old toad runnin' 'em down,--gave 'em a bit of a scare,
didn't it? Old mongrel, to kick up a fuss over a few paltry oranges!
As if we don't all know what boys is; why, there'd be no chance of
rarin' them without touchin' nothing, unless you carted them off to
the back-blocks where there wasn't no one within reach. I told him
what I thought of him. 'How dare you!' says I. 'Bring witnesses of
this,' said I."

Grandma Clay arose.

"Well, if that's your idea of rarin' a family, it ain't mine. Why,
can't you hear the parson's everlastin' preaching and giving examples
how taking a pin has been the start of a feller coming to the gallows;
and this is a much worse beginning than a pin! If the only way of
rarin' them not to steal was to put 'em where there was no possibility
of stealing nothink, a pretty sort of honesty that would be; you might
as well say the only way to rare a girl modest was to let her never
have a chance of being nothink else. Some people, of course, has
different views, but I believe in holding to mine; they've brought me
up to this time very well."

"Oh, you are terrible strict; you wouldn't have no peace of your life
rarin' boys if you cut things so fine as that. Now w'en women gets the
rule it might become the fashion for men to be more proper. Look here,
the men are that mad--"

Uncle Jake here interrupted her by appearing for four o'clock tea.

"Well, Mr Sorrel, now the women has come to show you how to do things,
there might be something done in the country."

"Nice fools they'll make of themselves," he sneeringly replied.

"They couldn't make no greater fools of themselves than the men has
always done,--lying in the gutter an' breakin' their faces," said Mrs
Bray.

"Wait till the women go at it, they'll fight like cats," continued
Uncle Jake, whose power