 legislation? do they take any part in that?«
    Hammond smiled and said: »I think you may wait for an answer to that
question till we get on to the subject of legislation. There may be novelties to
you in that subject also.«
    »Very well,« I said; »but about this woman question? I saw at the Guest
House that the women were waiting on the men: that seems a little like reaction,
doesn't it?«
    »Does it?« said the old man; »perhaps you think house-keeping an unimportant
occupation, not deserving of respect. I believe that was the opinion of the
advanced women of the nineteenth century, and their male backers. If it is
yours, I recommend to your notice an old Norwegian folk-lore tale called How the
Man minded the House, or some such title; the result of which minding was that,
after various tribulations, the man and the family cow balanced each other at
the end of a rope, the man hanging half-way up the chimney, the cow dangling
from the roof, which, after the fashion of the country, was of turf and sloping
down low to the ground. Hard on the cow, I think. Of course no such mishap could
happen to such a superior person as yourself,« he added, chuckling.
    I sat somewhat uneasy under this dry gibe. Indeed, his manner of treating
this latter part of the question seemed to me a little disrespectful.
    »Come, now, my friend,« quoth he, »don't you know that it is a great
pleasure to a clever woman to manage a house skilfully, and to do it so that all
the house-mates about her look pleased, and are grateful to her? And then, you
know, everybody likes to be ordered about by a pretty woman: why, it is one of
the pleasantest forms of flirtation. You are not so old that you cannot remember
that. Why, I remember it well.«
    And the old fellow chuckled again, and at last fairly burst out laughing.
    »Excuse me,« said he, after a while; »I am not laughing at anything you
could be thinking of, but at that silly nineteenth-century fashion, current
amongst rich so-called cultivated people, of ignoring all the steps by which
their daily dinner was reached, as matters too low for their lofty intelligence.
Useless idiots! Come, now, I am a literary man, as we queer animals used to be
called, yet I am
