s coming, nor do anything she bade me unless I liked
it. As I gave him no answer, he repeated what he had said.

"You know, Daisy, you are not obliged to care what she thinks."

I said I thought I was.

"What for?" said Preston.

"I have a great deal to learn you know," I said, feeling it very
gravely indeed in my little heart.

"What do you want to know so much?" said Preston.

I said, everything. I was very ignorant.

"You are no such thing," said Preston. "Your head is full this minute.
I think you have about as much knowledge as is good for you. I mean to
take care that you do not get too much."

"O Preston," said I, "that is very wrong. I have not any knowledge
scarcely."

"There is no occasion," said Preston stoutly. "I hate learned women."

"Don't you like to learn things?"

"That's another matter," said he. "A man must know things, or he can't
get along. Women are different."

"But I think it is nice to know things too," said I. "I don't see how
it is different."

"Why, a woman need not be a lawyer, or a doctor, or a professor," said
Preston; "all she need do, is to have good sense and dress herself
nicely."

"Is dressing so important?" said I, with a new light breaking over me.

"Certainly. Ribbons of the wrong colour will half kill a woman. And I
have heard Aunt Randolph say that a particular lady was ruined by her
gloves."

"Ruined by her gloves!" said I. "Did she buy so many?"

Preston went into such a laugh at that, I had to wait some time before
I could go on. I saw I had made some mistake, and I would not renew
that subject.

"Do _you_ mean to be anything of that sort?" I said, with some want of
connection.

"What sort? Ruined by my gloves? Not if I know it."

"No, no! I mean, a lawyer or a doctor or a professor?"

"I should think not!" said Preston, with a more emphatic denial.

"Then, what are you studying for?"

"Because, as I told you, Daisy, a man must know things, or he cannot
get on in the world."

I pondered the matter, and then I said, I should think good sense
would make a woman study too. I did not see the difference. "Besides,
Preston," I said, "if she didn't, they would not be equal."

"Equal!" cried Preston. "Equal! O Daisy, you ought to have lived in
some old times. You are two hundred years old, at least. Now don't go
to studying that, but come home. You have sat here long enough."

It was my last hour of freedom. Perhaps for that reason I remember
every