he table for us all to see.

"Well, well!" said grandma, "I seen the convicts flogged in days w'en
this was nothink but a colony to ship them to, and I drove coaches
w'en the line was only as far out of Sydney as here; and to think I
should have lived to see the last of the convicts gone, coaches nearly
become a novelty of the past, us callin' ourselves a nation, an' here
a paper in me hand to show I can vote a man into this parliament and
the other that the king's son hisself come out to open. I'm glad to
see us lived that we can have our say in the laws now same as the men,
and not have to swaller anythink they liked to put upon us to soot
theirselves," and the old dame, with a splendid light in her eye,
rubbed the creases out of the paper and spread it out again.

"Pooh, it's the same as we've had all along. You didn't think a
elector's right was anythink to be grinnin' at w'en the men had it. I
never seen you gapin' at mine; you'd think it was somethink wonderful
now when you've got one of your own," said Uncle Jake, coming in.

"Well, I never! Jake Sorrel! Of course we don't think much of other
people's things! What is the good of another woman's baby or husband
or _frying-pan_, that is, if it was equally a thing you couldn't
borrer? And if you was blind, what pleasure would you get out of some
one else seein' the blue sky, or warnin' that there was a snake there
to be trod on, an' that's what it's been like with the elector's
rights."

"Well, but what difference does that bit of paper make to you now? You
won't live no longer nor find your appetite no better, an' it won't
pay the taxes for you," contended uncle.

"Then if it is of so little account, why does it gruel you so much to
see me with it? An' little as it is, there ain't that paper's reason
why we shouldn't have always voted; and little though it is, that's
all the difference has stood all these years between men voting and
women not; and little as you think it is for a woman to have done
without, it's what men would shed their blood for if _they_ was done
out of it. It ain't what things actually are, it's all they stand
for," and grandma gathered up her _right_ and went to take off her
bonnet and change the bristling black dress which she donned for
public appearance.

I sat musing while she was away. "It ain't what things actually are,
it's all they stand for," as the old dame had said; and her delight in
being a freed citizen, no longer ranked w