other people mayn't like it. I do. I like excitement. I like to see all
that there is to see. Because I'm a girl I don't see why I can't go out
without a keeper, and why I cannot do what any man can do that isn't
wrong; do you? Perhaps you do--perhaps you don't. Perhaps you like a
girl to be always in the house dawdling or thumping a piano or reading
novels. Perhaps you think I'm bold because I don't like it, and won't
lie and say I do."
She spoke sharply and aggressively, and so evidently in answer to
Cass's unspoken indictment against her, that he was not surprised when
she became more direct.
"You know you were shocked when I went to fetch that Hornsby, the
coroner, after we found the dead body."
"Hornsby wasn't shocked," said Cass, a little viciously.
"What do you mean?" she said, abruptly.
"You were good friends enough until"--
"Until he insulted me just now; is that it?"
"Until he thought," stammered Cass, "that because you were--you
know--not so--so--so careful as other girls, he could be a little
freer."
"And so, because I preferred to ride a mile with him to see something
real that had happened, and tried to be useful instead of looking in
shop-windows in Main Street or promenading before the hotel"--
"And being ornamental," interrupted Cass. But this feeble and
un-Cass-like attempt at playful gallantry met with a sudden check.
Miss Porter drew herself together, and looked out of the window. "Do
you wish me to walk the rest of the way home?"
"No," said Cass, hurriedly, with a crimson face and a sense of
gratuitous rudeness.
"Then stop that kind of talk, right there!"
There was an awkward silence. "I wish I was a man," she said, half
bitterly, half earnestly. Cass Beard was not old and cynical enough to
observe that this devout aspiration is usually uttered by those who
have least reason to deplore their own femininity; and, but for the
rebuff he had just received, would have made the usual emphatic dissent
of our sex, when the wish is uttered by warm red lips and tender
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