“I should dearly love to please you, but I am afraid that my experiences, if related, would not help the cause. It may be, as you say, that men prevent women from rising to their level; but if there are such men, I have not met them. Ever since, when a little girl, I walked into a law office and asked for work, and the senior member kindly looked me over through his spectacles and inquired if I thought I could learn to index books, and the junior member glanced under my hat and said: “This is a pretty little girl and we must be pretty to her,” I have loved and respected the men amongst whom I have worked and wherever I have worked. I may have been exceptionally fortunate, but I know this: the men for whom I have worked and amongst whom I have spent my life, whether they have been business or professional men, students or great lawyers and politicians, all alike have upheld me, inspired me, advised me, taught me, given me a broad outlook upon life for a woman; interested me in themselves and in their work. As to corrupting my mind and my morals, as you say so many men do, when they have young and innocent girls to deal with: As a woman I look back over my years spent amongst business and professional men, and see myself, as I was at first, an impressionable, ignorant little girl, born a Bohemian, easy to lead and easy to win, but borne aloft and morally supported by the goodness of my brother men, the men amongst whom I worked. That is why, dear Ethel, you will have to forgive me, because I cannot carry out your design, and help your work, as otherwise I would like to do.”

“That, mother,” declared Miss Evebrook, “answers all Mrs. Carman’s insinuations, and should make her ashamed of herself. Can any one know the sentiments which little Alice entertains toward men, and wonder at her winning out as she has?”

Mrs. Evebrook was about to make reply, when her glance happening to stray out of the window, she noticed a pink parasol.

“Mrs. Spring Fragrance!” she exclaimed, while her daughter went to the door and invited in the owner of the pink parasol, who was seated in a veranda rocker calmly writing in a note-book.

“I’m so sorry that we did not hear your ring, Mrs. Spring Fragrance,” said she.

“There is no necessity for you to sorrow,” replied the little Chinese woman. “I did not expect you to hear a ring which rang not. I failed to pull the bell.”

“You forgot, I suppose,” suggested Ethel Evebrook.

“Is it wise to tell secrets?” ingenuously inquired Mrs. Spring Fragrance.

“Yes, to your friends. Oh, Mrs. Spring Fragrance, you are so refreshing.”

“I have pleasure, then, in confiding to you. I have an ambition to accomplish an immortal book about the Americans, and the conversation I heard through the window was so interesting to me that I thought I would take some of it down for my book before I intruded myself. With your kind permission I will translate for your correction.”