y? And then women are so dependent on men. A
woman can get nothing without a man."

"I manage to get on somehow," said Priscilla.

"No, you don't, Miss Stanbury,--if you think of it. You want mutton.
And who kills the sheep?"

"But who cooks it?"

"But the men-cooks are the best," said Nora; "and the men-tailors,
and the men to wait at table, and the men-poets, and the
men-painters, and the men-nurses. All the things that women do, men
do better."

"There are two things they can't do," said Priscilla.

"What are they?"

"They can't suckle babies, and they can't forget themselves."

"About the babies, of course not. As for forgetting themselves,--I am
not quite so sure that I can forget myself.--That is just where your
brother went down last night."

They had at this moment reached the top of the steep slope below
which the river ran brawling among the rocks, and Nora seated herself
exactly where she had sat on the previous evening.

"I have been down scores of times," said Priscilla.

"Let us go now."

"You wouldn't go when Hugh asked you yesterday."

"I didn't care then. But do come now,--if you don't mind the climb."
Then they went down the slope and reached the spot from whence Hugh
Stanbury had jumped from rock to rock across the stream. "You have
never been out there, have you?" said Nora.

"On the rocks? Oh, dear, no! I should be sure to fall."

"But he went; just like a goat."

"That's one of the things that men can do, I suppose," said
Priscilla. "But I don't see any great glory in being like a goat."

"I do. I should like to be able to go, and I think I'll try. It is so
mean to be dainty and weak."

"I don't think it at all dainty to keep dry feet."

"But he didn't get his feet wet," said Nora. "Or if he did, he didn't
mind. I can see at once that I should be giddy and tumble down if I
tried it."

"Of course you would."

"But he didn't tumble down."

"He has been doing it all his life," said Priscilla.

"He can't do it up in London. When I think of myself, Miss Stanbury,
I am so ashamed. There is nothing that I can do. I couldn't write an
article for a newspaper."

"I think I could. But I fear no one would read it."

"They read his," said Nora, "or else he wouldn't be paid for writing
them." Then they climbed back again up the hill, and during the
climbing there were no words spoken. The slope was not much of a
hill,--was no more than the fall from the low ground of the valley