Page:Samantha on Children's Rights.djvu/78

 considered it immodest, and I had jest about as soon not go at all as to go in my long skirts. The last time I rode, to please Louis I wore my long dress, and right in the middle of the village my dress wound round the wheel, and it wound my dress right up offen me, and I fell over onto my head."

"I suppose he considered that more modest?" sez I, dry as a chip.

"He is dretful opposed to short skirts," sez she; "he talked awful to me about 'em."

"Why don't you insist on his wearin' his bath-robe on his wheel? Let him try it once, and then see. Why didn't you say that you wuz shocked at the sight of his long limbs, and favored the Eastern garb for men? Your dress wuz modest and mejum, it come to the tops of your shoes, and you wore a divided skirt of the same cloth; you can tell him, from me, your dress wuz jest twice as modest as his'n."

"Oh," sez she, "I wouldn't think of criticisin' his dress."

"Why not, as long as he criticises yours? But as for your dress and his'n, they're both all right. And now do you, within the next fifteen minutes, don that garb, and go out on that wheel and take a good long ride."

"Oh, I don't feel as though I could go right against his wishes. I have done everything I could to hold his love."

"You have done too much," sez I coolly. "And now, Elinor Pogram, do you brace up and have a little gumption. Get right onto your wheel and go out into the sweet air and sunlight; and if you meet Louis Arnold, jest nod at him cool as a cowcumber, and go right