.
Hubbard's wishes."

"If you cannot regulate a clock without a woman standing over you, or
hold a bit of jasmine in one hand and a hammer in the other without a
woman's assistance, you deserve to remain in your ridiculous
background. You will find the tools in the top drawer of the dresser.
If you will be good enough to get them and go on with your work, Mother
Hubbard and I will soon finish ours."

He grinned, and Mother Hubbard groaned; but before long we were sitting
together in the garden, with the knitting needles making music as usual.

The Cynic leaned back in his chair and watched the blue smoke curl
lazily from his cigarette. The laughter of the visitors had ceased in
the streets, but the voice of song was wafted occasionally to our ears
from the fields below. How is it that homeward-bound excursionists
always sing?

"I take it, Miss Holden, that you are a Prototype, which I spell in
capitals. But I venture to predict that you will not have a large
following. The modern craze is for kudos, and in this particular the
success of an enterprise like yours is not likely to be remarkable."

"What, exactly, is my enterprise?" I inquired. "Please interpret me to
myself."

"The surface reading is easy," he replied, "but the significance is
hieroglyphic. Who can read the riddle of woman's motives? They are
past finding out, and man can only grope for the meaning with
half-blind observation, having eyes indeed, but seeing not; hearing,
but not understanding."

"As, for instance?" I again inquired.

"I will come to your case shortly," he continued, "and meantime I will
speak in parables. I went into a fashionable draper's shop the other
day, as I had business with one of the principals. He was engaged, and
I elected to wait and was accommodated with a seat near the glove
counter. My experiences were distinctly interesting, but I cannot yet
read the riddle they offered me. Before I was summoned to the office
three customers had approached the counter at separate times, and the
procedure was in all three cases on approximately similar lines.

"The lady sailed up to the counter, deposited her parcels upon it,
seated herself upon the waiting chair, adjusted her skirt, and then,
turning to the deferential young gentleman whose head was inclined
artistically to one side in the way that is characteristic of the most
genteel establishments, murmured languidly: 'Gloves, please.'

"The deferential young gen