She is one of the female patriots who save the post-office
department from being a disastrous loss to the treasury. Herbert is
thinking of the great radical difference in the two sexes, which
legislation will probably never change; that leads a woman always, to
write letters on her lap and a man on a table,--a distinction which
is commended to the notice of the anti-suffragists.
The Mistress, in a pretty little breakfast-cap, is moving about the
room with a feather-duster, whisking invisible dust from the
picture-frames, and talking with the Parson, who has just come in, and
is thawing the snow from his boots on the hearth. The Parson says the
thermometer is 15 deg., and going down; that there is a snowdrift across
the main church entrance three feet high, and that the house looks as if
it had gone into winter quarters, religion and all. There were only ten
persons at the conference meeting last night, and seven of those were
women; he wonders how many weather-proof Christians there are in the
parish, anyhow.
The Fire-Tender is in the adjoining library, pretending to write; but
it is a poor day for ideas. He has written his wife's name about
eleven hundred times, and cannot get any farther.
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