it is
only because she is recoiling to strike again. She calls this "a spell
o' weather."

It is a bitter monologue this leather-fleshed, lathy-framed fellow
gives me, and I takes it as a body blow, but I answer not a word, for I
have heard it said, or perhaps I have read it, that the meek will own
the earth; besides--you can try it yourself--nothing so puzzles the
understanding of mortal man as a woman who refuses to go on defence.
Her silence fills him with a gnawing uneasiness similar to that one
feels when he has swallowed a tack.

And yet I would like to tell him he has overstated his case; to point
out that the trees are cross-grained to the wind; that their green
spectacles prevent their seeing things in proper perspective, and that
they are deep-rooted in obsolete prejudices. Sir Pine cannot escape
being an intractable old person, seeing that woman's suffrage was not
the rule seventy-five years ago, or more, when he was born. Yes! I
should have liked to say this, but it is almost as equal satisfaction
to score a verbal chicane.

I think, perhaps, the men felt my silence more than I intended, for
they argue the anti-suffragist out of countenance, although I have no
doubt they secretly and sincerely agree with him. To change the
subject, one of them brings me a caged squirrel he is taking to his
residency. Punch is a well-groomed squirrel and has an immoderate
tongue. His owner says that in the mountains these red squirrels
collect and dry mushrooms. They group them on a rock, or fix them in
the forks of young trees, ultimately banking them in hollow logs. He
is trying to tame Punch, but then we have all heard of the American who
tried to tame an oyster.

Punchinello is as active as pop-corn in a pan. He is a squirrel with a
job, and not nearly so light-minded as he looks. His job is to go
round and round on a wheel but never to make progress, for the wheel is
so swung that it revolves with him. I am appalled by the absolute
inutility of it. What a life! What a life! Wearing out a wheel and
himself at one and the same time. "Let him go when you get to the
woods," say I, "it will be kinder. You have heard of those Eastern
folk, who, when they wish to praise Allah, buy birds and set them free."

"No! I have not heard," he replies; "tell me about them."

"There is no more to the story, that is all."

"But I don't see the application when a fellow does not want to render
praises. I investe