“Then men ought to be up and doin’ somethin’ about it,” said the widow. “I wouldn’t give shucks for a man that let a woman run him. All this here talk about emancipatin’ wimmin makes me sick to my stummick. Wimmin don’t need emancipatin’. What they need is bossin’. I’ve been a woman consid’able of a spell and I calc’late I ought to know.”
“I think my grandmother would agree with you if she were living.”
“Of course. I’m grandmother to six. My idee is that wimmin don’t git settled and sensible till they turn sixty.”
“I’m in favor of giving the vote to all grandmothers.”
“It would fetch consid’able sense into elections,” said the widow. “Don’t hurry off. I like to talk—maybe you’ve noticed it.”
“And enjoyed it,” said Jim, passing through the door.
Miss Ducharme was putting on her hat in the hall. Jim’s first thought was to pass on without pause; his second and better thought was to parley.
“I’m waving a flag of truce, Miss Ducharme,” he said. “Can’t we declare an armistice for ten minutes to bury our dead?”
“I have no war with you,” she replied, with no interest. “I simply don’t like you. Why should we talk about it?”
“There’ll be no trouble on that score,” said Jim, smiling. He rather enjoyed her acerbity. “You see, I’m not exactly fond of you. But we’re living under the same roof and eating at the same table. If we could agree on a truce or a pretense that we are not distasteful to each other—merely while we’re in the house—it might make Mrs. Stickney’s life a bit more joyous. I assure you that if I had known you lived here I shouldn’t have intruded.”
“Mrs. Stickney has a right to take whatever boarders she chooses.”
“I’m not asking you to be friends—” Jim stopped. He was conscious of that feeling of sudden determination, of that urge to quick action which had come upon him several times since his arrival in Diversity, of that spirit which had earned for him among his workmen the name of Sudden Jim. So he cut off his sentence and started another.
“I’m going to be your friend, whether you like it or not. Possibly I shall even like you. You seem to need friends, if what you said to me the other day is an indication of what is really going on inside you. The matter is out of your hands. You said absurd things; things dangerous for any young woman to say, even if she knows in her heart they’re ridiculous.”