The dire soul-crushings with which old wives threaten me consequent upon the glories of motherhood are enough to quell a quadruped. Aunt Jane repudiated the blame too, and said I should have to wait until the next world to have things righted.

“According to what I have heard, a woman who has had the hell of bearing twelve children to give some male object a heaven of begetting is just as likely to go to hell as the father: and the next world’s joys are open equally to men, more so, in fact. That next-world-payment-of-debts is sloppy rubbish,” I snorted.

“You have a great deal to learn,” said Auntie. “You are a rude ignorant girl. If you persist in thinking as you do, you’ll come to harm.”

Pa rubbed his hair up on end and gently remarked, “What is coming to harm in this debate. Aunt Jane, is your theology.”

Pa’s words fell as healingly as rain on the dust. I was sorry I had been rude to Auntie. When I got Pa alone I questioned him further, and he said, as if talking to himself, “As high as a people rises, so high will be its gods.”

“The trouble with the Church of England God,” Pa continued, “is that he is made in the image of some darned old cackling prelate, so mean and cowardly that the Devil, for consistency and ability, is a gentleman beside him.” Pa had a twinkle in his eye as he added, “But you know, it isn’t gentlemanly to upset people of less mental powers than yourself; besides, it is dangerous. Think as much as you like, my girl, but let sleeping dogs lie unless you can do some real good by waking them up.”

Great-aunt spends a lot of time with us. She says Pa is the nicest man she has ever known in a house, that I should thank God on my knees every night for such a parent. This so differs from Ma’s inculcations that I would attribute it to Auntie’s love of contradiction, only that under cross-questioning she says that had she had such a father when a girl she would have thought herself in heaven. Her father was an unmerciful autocrat. His daughters had to live their lives under cover, so to speak, like mice. I wish I could be so dominating, but judging by Grandma and Ma and myself, this progenitor’s progenitiveness is becoming diluted with the generations.

I concede that technically Ma is my primary parent and Pa merely secondary. The question of woman’s emancipation and the justice which is her due make this fatally clear in theory, but when it comes to the practice of an affection which springs spontaneously from my human breast, Pa can have no second place; and when it comes to being understood, well—but—but—Ma says having children of my own will teach me. I wonder what.

I had lots of other stuffing in me too. Resiliently I renewed my attack on LIFE. Rebellion against artificial WOMANLINESS did not interfere with all that rushed out of my mind on the wings of imagination. There was one great recreation open to me, even at ’Possum Gully, which was a sop to energy. I could ride. I could ride tremendously. I loved horses and seemed to become part of them. In the district were any number of good horses, most of them owned by bachelors. As one of these bachelors said, “A lovely high-spirited girl is just the thing to top-off a good horse.”