Page:An Unfinished Song.djvu/87

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82
AN UNFINISHED SONG

doctor or with the medicine?" I became embarrassed, but was still fretful.

"If you will only taste this mixture once, you will under stand my feeling," I retorted.

"If that will remove your petulance, I will gladly empty the whole phial," he replied, still laughing. "I say, doctor," he continued, "will any one still question the intellectual inferiority of woman in the face of proofs like this?"

"We do not understand you," said my sister. "Please explain yourself."

"Women will play the coquette with fate itself when they have no one else to play with. They seem to think they can melt its iron, inflexible force with mere appealing glances from pretty eyes while men will boldly undertake to fight fate."

"But if fate is so inflexible how can you reckon them wise who undertake to fight it?"

"Well said. I quite agree with you," exclaimed the doctor.

"So you are taking their side. Well, I can't stay here any longer. I must go downstairs, I have a client waiting for me. See you as you go." And my brother-in-law departed.

The doctor turned to me with the con-