You understand that "male and female created He them," and you
let it go at that. Miss Martha Hopkins, then, was daring; she was
also exclusive.
I suppose if I had been younger I could have smiled at Miss Martha,
as Susy Gatchell and her graceless friends did, but somehow she
appeared to me a creature trying to peck at the world and peek at
the stars through the bars of a bird-cage. That's why, when I met
her a morning or two before the Morenas exhibit, I asked her if she
wouldn't like to see it. I knew that, once asked, she could be kept
away by nothing short of an earthquake or a deluge. Yet--
"Thank you, Miss Smith, I shall be glad to look over the sketches."
And she added blandly: "Four o'clock, did you say? Very well, I will
come. It is one's moral duty to encourage men of talent."
"Whoop!" cried The Author, joyously, when I told him that. "Revenge
yourself, Morenas: sketch her, man! sketch her!"
Morenas laughed. "Put her in one of your books and make her talk,"
he suggested slyly. "You have a genius for making a woman talk like
an idiot."
"That's because he does the talking for her, himself," said Alicia,
impudently.
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