“You feel better now. I hope the proud fit is going off, and we can enjoy a reasonable chat. These clothes—what a bore they are, to both poor and rich,—the rich setting their heart too much upon them, and the poor despised because they have not enough to keep them warm,—and those mean and old. Then, this is not all. There are the perpetual changes of the fashions, which oblige people to put on what does not suit them, and to make monstrous frights of themselves to dress in the mode. You must have a morning-gown, a dinner-dress, and an evening costume; all to be shifted and changed in the same day, consuming a deal of time, which might be enjoyed in wholesome exercise. I have no patience with such folly. The animals, let me tell you, are a great deal better off than their masters. Nature has provided them with a coat which never wants changing but once a-year; and that is done so gradually, that they experience no inconvenience. No need of their consulting the fashions, or patching and stitching to keep up a decent appearance. It is a thousand pities that clothes were ever invented. People would have been much healthier, and looked much better without them.” “My dear madam, did not God himself instruct our first parents to make garments of the skins of animals?” “They were not necessary in a state of innocence, or He would have created them like cows and horses, with clothes upon their backs,” said Wilhelmina, sharply. “It was their own fault that they ever required such trumpery, entailing upon their posterity a curse as bad as the thorns and thistles. For I always consider it as such, when sweltering under the weight of gowns and petticoats on a hot day; and I rate Mother Eve roundly, and in no measured terms, for her folly in losing the glorious privilege of walking in buff.” “You must have been thinking of that,” said Flora, rather mischievously, and glancing down at Miss Wilhelmina’s legs, “when you cut your petticoats so short.”