ill cling like
grim death. They will do any possible thing to a skirt--slit it, thin
it, shorten it, hike it up one side--people are setting up nights right
now thinking up some new thing to do to it--but women won't give it up
and dress modestly as men do because it's the only unfair drag they got
left with the men. I see one of our offended sex is daily asking right
out in a newspaper: "Are women people?" I'd just like to whisper to her
that no one yet knows.

"'If they'll quit their skirts, dress as decently as a man does so they
won't have any but a legitimate pull with him, we'd have a chance to
find out if they're good for anything else. As a matter of fact, they
don't want to be people and dress modestly and wear hats you couldn't
pay over eight dollars for. I believe there was one once, but the poor
thing never got any notice from either sex after she became--a people,
as you might say.'

"Well, I was going on to get off a few more things I'd got madded up to,
but I caught the look in poor Hetty's face, and it would have melted a
stone. Poor child! There she was, wanting a certain man and willing to
wear or not wear anything on earth that would nail him, and not knowing
what would do it, and complicating her ignorance with meaningless
worries about modesty and daringness and the freedom of her poor sex,
that ain't ever even deuce-low with one woman in a million.

"And right then, watching her distress, all at once I get my big
inspiration--it just flooded me like the sun coming up. I don't know if
I'm like other folks, but things do come to me that way. And not only
was it a great truth, but it got me out of the hole of having to tell
Hetty certain truths about herself that these Non Plush Ultras made all
too glaring.

"'Listen,' I says: 'You believe I'm your friend, don't you? And you
believe anything I tell you is from the heart out and will probably have
a grain of sense in it. Well, here is an inspired thought: Women won't
ever dress modestly like men do because men don't want 'em to. I never
saw a man yet that did if he'd tell the truth, and so this here dark
city stranger won't be any exception. Now, then, what do we see on
Saturday next? Why, we see this here gay throng sally forth for
Stender's Spring, the youth and beauty of Red Gap, including Mr. D.,
with his nice refined odour of Russia leather and bank bills of large
size--from fifties up--that haven't been handled much. The crowd is of
all sexe