"Certainly they are," agreed Honey, not peevishly but as one who
indorses, unnecessarily, a self-evident fact. "They've lived here on
Angel Island as long as we have. But they haven't made good yet, and we
have. Why, just imagine them working on the New Camp - playing tennis,
even."
"But we prevented all that," Frank protested. "We cut their wings.
Handicapped as they were by their small feet, they could do nothing."
"But," Honey ejaculated, "if they'd been our physical equals, they would
never have let us cut their wings."
"But we caught them with a trick," Frank said, "we put them in a
position in which they could not use their physical strength."
"Well, if they'd been our mental equals, they'd never let themselves get
caught like that."
"Well - but - but - but - " Frank sputtered. "Now you're arguing
crazily. You're going round in a circle."
"Oh, well," Honey exclaimed impatiently, let's not argue any more. You
always go round in a circle. I hate argument. It never changes, anybody.
You never hear what the other fellow says. You always come out of it
with your convictions strengthened."
Frank made a gesture of despair. He drew a little book from his pocket
and began to read.
"There's one thing about them that certainly is to laugh," Honey said
after a silence, a glint of amusement in his big eyes, "and that is the
care they take of those useless feet of theirs. Lulu's even taken to
doing hers up every night in oil or cream. It's their particular vanity.
Now, take that, for instance. Men never have those petty vanities. I
mean real men - regular fellows."
"How about the western cowboy and his fancy boots?" Frank shot back over
his book.
"Oh, that's different," Ralph said. "Honey's right. That business of
taking care of their feet symbolizes the whole sex to me. They do the
things they do just because the others do them - like sheep jumping over
a wall. Their fad at present is pedicure. Peachy's at it just like the
rest of them. Every night when I come home, I find her sitting down with
both feet done up in one of those beautiful scarfs she's collected,
resting on a cushion. It's rather amusing, though." Ralph struggled to
suppress his smile of appreciation.
"Clara's the same." Pete smiled too. "She's cut herself out some high
sandals from a pair of my old boots. And she wears them day and night.
She says she's been careless lately about getting her feet sunburned.
And she's not going to let me see them until they're perfectly white and
transparent again. She says that small, beautiful, and useless feet were
one of the points of beauty with her people."