“You are welcome to laugh at any short petticoats,” said Wilhelmina, “as long as I feel the comfort of wearing them. Now do tell me, candidly,—what impropriety is there in a woman showing her leg and foot, more than in another woman showing her hand and arm? The evil lies in your own thoughts. You see the Bavarian buy-a-broom girls passing before your windows every day, with petticoats cut three or four inches shorter than mine. You perceive no harm in that. ‘It is the fashion of her country,’ you cry. Custom banishes from our minds the idea of impropriety; and the naked savage of the woods is as modest as the closely covered civilian. Now, why am I compelled to wear long petticoats drabbling in the mud, when a Bavarian may wear hers up to the knees, and nobody think the worse of her? I am as much a free agent as she is; have as much right to wear what I please. I like short petticoats—I can walk better in them—they neither take up the dust or the mud, and leave my motions free and untrammelled—and what’s more, I mean to wear them. “I have tried trowsers; but they fettered me. It is difficult to stow a large figure like mine away into trowsers. I felt as if my legs were in the stocks, and kicked them off in disdain—simply remarking—‘what fools men are!’ So, you don’t like my short petticoats? and I hate your long ones. First, because they are slatternly and inconvenient; secondly, because they make your stockings dirty; and thirdly, because they give you the idea that they are intended to conceal crooked legs. So don’t say one word in their favour.” “It is but a matter of taste and opinion,” said Flora; “we will not quarrel about it. I think it wiser, however, in order to avoid singularity, to conform to existing fashions.” “Mrs. Lyndsay, I can prove to you in less than two minutes, that you transgress daily your own rules.” Flora looked incredulous. “You do not wear a _bustle_, which is now considered by all ladies an indispensable article of dress.” “You are right: it is a disgusting fashion, which destroys the grace and just proportions of the female form. A monstrous piece of absurdity, that I have never adopted, and never will.”[A] [A] During twenty years Flora kept her word. “Bravo! Bravo!” shouted Miss Wilhelmina, clapping her hands in an ecstasy of delight. “I have conquered you with your own weapons. There is no slipping past the horns of that dilemma. You refuse to wear a hump on your back, and I decline the honour of the long petticoats. Let us hear how you can justify yourself?” “You have gained an advantage by my own admission,” said Flora; “but I can’t consider myself beat.” “Fairly out of the field, my dear—fairly out of the field. Acknowledge the defeat with a good grace. Let us shake hands, and drink a glass of wine together in token of peace.” “I never keep wine in the house,” said Flora, rather embarrassed, at the request, particularly at such an early hour of the day.