Page:Comin' Thro' the Rye (1898).djvu/209

Rh woman, shunted on to a siding, and bound to remain there for the rest of your life, unless some one has a fancy for murdering you, or you distinguish yourself in some discreditable way!"

"Women ought to be seen, but never heard of," says George, decidedly; you don't want to scream on hustings, do you, Nell?"

"No, indeed, women possess far too much power to wish to wrest the semblance of it from man. A woman's rights! by gaining them woman always seems to me to have lost all the privileges of her own sex, while obtaining none of the dignity of the other."

"Well done!" says George; "I'm glad you're not bitten like all the rest."

"That is because I am not clever," I say, laughing. "I should cut but a sorry figure among those highly cultivated females, and no one likes to look small!" (I turn aside to gather a spray or two of sweet woodruff that has no scent in life, but when dried possesses the fragrance of new-mown hay.) "Do you see that vervain, George? It is said to make the company it is in gay and jocund; had we not better take some home for our fathers?"

"I don't think you want any," he says, looking at me; "I never saw such a merry little soul as you are; and the way you laugh!"

"I read somewhere the other day, that every laugh is a nail out of your coffin," I say gaily; "if that is true there cannot be one left in mine, can there? Don't try and take from me my poor little cheerfulness; trouble will come fast enough; it always does to very happy people. It is the croaking, grumbling, ill-used folk who get through life comfortably and make other people bear their burdens!"

"You would never laugh as you do if you were in love," says George; "you couldn't."

"I do laugh very loud," I say, considering; "almost as loud as