"Glad Daniel got a licking?"

"Oh, not just that; but it shows him that if he's going to be the people's champion he will have to be unhorsed pretty often. If all these things could be accomplished easily, there wouldn't be any glory in success. It's not an easy thing to drive a man like Mr. Ba.s.sett out of politics, or even to defeat the dangerous measures he introduces in the legislature. If it were easy to get rid of them, such men wouldn't last long. Besides, I'm a little afraid it wasn't half so much Dan's patriotism that was involved as it was his vanity. He was bitter because he found that Mr. Ba.s.sett had deceived him and was trying to use him.

But in view of Mr. Ba.s.sett's many kindnesses to him he wouldn't make a personal matter of it in the House. Dan's opposition was based on legal defects in that bill,--points that were over the heads of most of the legislators,--but he is now determined to keep up the fight. He finds that Mr. Ba.s.sett is quite able to do as he pleases even without his services. He felt that he dealt with him magnanimously in keeping his antagonism to the corporation bill on the high plane of its legal unsoundness. Mr. Ba.s.sett ignored this, and merely secured the pa.s.sage of the bill by marshaling all the votes he needed in both parties."

"That's a new scheme they say Morton has introduced into Indiana--this getting men on both sides to vote for one of these bad bills. That shuts up the party newspapers, and neither side can use that particular thing as ammunition at the next election. Instead of talking about House Bill Ninety-five in the next campaign, they will howl about the tariff on champagne, or pensions for veterans of the Black Hawk War. They're all tarred with the same stick and don't dare call attention to the other fellow. Daniel had better get out of politics," she ended leadingly.

"Please, no! He'd better stay in and learn how to make himself count. So far as Mr. Ba.s.sett is concerned, I think that for some reason he had gone as far with Dan as he cared to. I think he was prepared for the break."

Mrs. Owen was wiping her spectacles on a piece of chamois skin she kept in her desk for the purpose, and she concluded this rite with unusual deliberation.

"How do you figure that out, Sylvia?"

"This must be confidential, Aunt Sally; I have said nothing to Dan about it; but the night of your party Mr. Ba.s.sett was in a curious frame of mind."

"It seemed to me he was particularly cheerful. I thought Morton had as good a time as anybody."

"Superficially, yes; but I had a long talk with him--in the hall, after the dancing had begun. I think in spite of his apparent indifference to the constant fire of his enemies, it has had an effect on him. He's hardened--or, if he was always hard, he doesn't care any longer whether he wears the velvet glove or not. That attack on Mr. Thatcher in the convention ill.u.s.trates what I mean. His self-control isn't as complete as most people seem to think it is; he lets go of himself like a petulant child. That must be a new development in him. It doesn't chime with the other things you hear of him as a shrewd, calculating manager, who strikes his enemies in the dark. He was in an evil humor that night or he wouldn't have talked to me as he did. He was ugly and vindictive.

He was not only glad he had put Dan in the way of temptation, but he wanted me to know that he had done it. He seemed to be setting his back to the wall and daring the world."

"Well, well," said Mrs. Owen. "Morton has seemed a little uneasy lately.

But there don't seem to be any reason why he should have picked you out to jump on. You never did anything to Morton."

"Yes," said Sylvia, smiling; "I laughed at him once! I laughed at him about the way he had treated Mr. Thatcher. We stopped right there, with the laugh; he laughed too, you know. And he took that up again at the party--and I had to explain what my laugh meant."

"Oh, you explained it, did you?"

And Sylvia recounted the interview.

"I guess Morton hasn't been laughed at much, and that was why he remembered it and wanted to talk to you again. I suspect that Hallie scolds him when she doesn't pet him. Most folks are afraid of Morton; that's why he could take care of that corporation bill with the 'Advertiser' jumping him the way it did. Well, well! That must have been quite a day for Morton. You laughed at him, and when the rest of you went off in Allen's automobile that night I ran the harrow over him a few times myself. Well, well!"

Mrs. Owen smiled as though recalling an agreeable experience. "As long as there are old stumps in a field that you must plough around I haven't got much use for the land. When the corn comes up you don't see the stumps, just sitting on the fence and looking over the scenery; but when you go to put the plow through again, your same old stumps loom up again, solider than ever. I guess Daniel will come out all right; he was raised on a farm and ought to know how to drive a straight furrow. By the way, they telephoned me from Elizabeth House last night that there's a vacant room there. Who's moved out?"

Mrs. Owen always prolonged the E of Elizabeth, and never referred to the House except by its full t.i.tle.

"Rose Farrell has left. Went unexpectedly, I think. I didn't know she was going."

"Let me see. She's that girl that worked for Morton and Daniel. What's she leaving for?"

"I'm going to see if I can't get her back," replied Sylvia evasively.

"Why Rose has been at Elizabeth House for two years and under the rules she can stay a year longer. She ain't getting married, is she?"

"I think not," replied Sylvia. "I'm going to look her up and get her back if possible."

"You do that, Sylvia. It ain't just your place, but I'll be glad if you'll see what's the matter. We don't want to lose a girl if we can help it."

Mrs. Owen rose and transferred a pile of paperbound books from a shelf to her desk. Sylvia recognized these as college catalogues and noted bits of paper thrust into the leaves as markers.

"I've been looking into this business some since we went down to college. I had a lot of these schools send me their catalogues and they're mighty interesting, though a good deal of it I don't understand.

Sylvia" (Sylvia never heard her name drawled as Mrs. Owen spoke it without a thrill of expectancy)--"Sylvia, there's a lot of books being written, and pieces in the magazines all the time, about women and what we have done or can't do. What do you suppose it's all leading up to?"

"That question is bigger than I am, Aunt Sally. But I think the conditions that have thrown women out into the world as wage-earners are forcing one thing--just one thing, that is more important now than any other--it's all summed up in the word efficiency."

"Efficiency?"

Mrs. Owen reached for the poker and readjusted the logs; she watched the resulting sparks for a moment, then settled herself back in her chair and repeated Sylvia's word again.

"You mean that a woman has got to learn how to make her jelly jell? Is that your notion?"

"Exactly that. She must learn not to waste her strokes. Any scheme of education for woman that leaves that out works an injury. If women are to be a permanent part of the army of wage-earning Americans they must learn to get full value from their minds or hands--either one, it's the same. The trouble with us women is that there's a lot of the old mediaeval taint in us."

"Mediaeval? Say that some other way, Sylvia."

"I mean that we're still crippled--we women--by the long years in which nothing was expected of us but to sit in ivy-mantled cas.e.m.e.nts and work embroidery while our lords went out to fight, or thrummed the lute under our windows."

"Well, there was Joan of Arc: she delivered the goods."

"To be sure; she does rather light up her time, doesn't she?" laughed Sylvia.

"Sylvia, the day I first saw a woman hammer a typewriter in a man's office, I thought the end had come. It seemed, as the saying is, 'agin nater'; and I reckon it was. Nowadays these buildings downtown are full of women. At noontime Washington Street is crowded with girls who work in offices and shops. They don't get much pay for it either. Most of those girls would a lot rather work in an office or stand behind a counter than stay at home and help their mothers bake and scrub and wash and iron. These same girls used to do just that,--help their mothers,--coming downtown about once a month, or when there was a circus procession, and having for company some young engine-wiper who took them to church or to a Thanksgiving matinee and who probably married them some day. A girl who didn't marry took in sewing for the neighbors, and as like as not went to live with her married sister and looked after her babies. I've seen all these things change. Nowadays girls have got to have excitement. They like spending their days in the big buildings; the men in the offices jolly them, the men bookkeepers and clerks seem a lot nicer than the mechanics that live out in their neighborhood. When they ain't busy they loaf in the halls of the buildings flirting, or reading novels and talking to their bosses' callers. They don't have to soil their hands, and you can dress a girl up in a skirt and shirt-waist so she looks pretty decent for about two weeks of her wages. They don't care much about getting married unless they can strike some fellow with an automobile who can buy them better clothes than they can buy themselves. What they hanker for is a flat or boarding-house where they won't have any housekeeping to do. Housekeeping! Their notions of housekeeping don't go beyond boiling an egg on a gas range and opening up a sofa to sleep on. You're an educated woman, Sylvia; what's going to come of all this?"

"It isn't just the fault of the girls that they do this, is it? Near my school-house there are girls who stay at home with their mothers, and many of them are without any ambition of any kind. I'm a good deal for the girl who wants to strike out for herself. The household arts as you knew them in your youth can't be practised in the home any more on the income of the average man. Most women of the kind we're talking about wear ready-made clothes--not because they're lazy, but because the tailor-made suits which life in a city demands can't be made by any amateur sempstress. They're turned out by the carload in great factories from designs of experts. There's no bread to bake in the modern mechanic's home, for better bread and cake are made more cheaply in the modern bakeshop. Wasn't there really a good deal of nonsense about the pies that mother used to make--I wonder? There were perhaps in every community women who were natural cooks, but our Mary used to drive grandfather crazy with her saleratus biscuits and greasy doughnuts. A good cook in the old times was famous all over the community because the general level of cooking was so low. Women used to take great pride in their preservings and jellyings, but at the present prices of fruit and sugar a city woman would lose money making such things. It's largely because this work can't be done at home that girls such as we have at Elizabeth House have no sort of manual dexterity and have to earn a poor living doing something badly that they're not interested in or fitted for. Women have one terrible handicap in going out into the world to earn their living; it's the eternal romance that's in all of us," said Sylvia a little dreamily. "I don't believe any woman ever gets beyond that." It was a note she rarely struck and Mrs. Owen looked at her quickly. "I mean, the man who may be always waiting just around the corner."

"You mean every girl has that chance before her? Well, a happy marriage is a great thing--the greatest thing that can happen to a woman. My married life was a happy one--very happy; but it didn't last long. It was my misfortune to lose my husband and the little girl when I was still young. They think I'm hard--yes, a good many people do--because I've been making money. But I had to do something; I couldn't sit with my hands folded; and what I've done I've tried to do right. I hope you won't leave love and marriage out of your life, Sylvia. In this new condition of things that we've talked about there's no reason why a woman shouldn't work--do things, climb up high, and be a woman, too.

He'll be a lucky man who gets you to stand by him and work for him and with him."

"Oh," sighed Sylvia, "there are so many things to do! I want to know so much and do so much!"

"You'll know them and do them; but I don't want you to have a one-sided life. Dear Sylvia," and Mrs. Owen bent toward the girl and touched her hand gently, "I don't want you to leave love out of your life."

There was an interval of silence and then Mrs. Owen opened a drawer and drew out a faded morocco case. "Here's a daguerreotype of my mother and me, when I was about four years old. Notice how cute I look in those pantalets--ever see those things before? Well, I've been thinking that I'm a kind of left-over from daguerreotype times, and you belong to the day of the kodak. I'm a dingy old shadow in a daguerreotype picture, in pantalets, cuddled up against my mother's hoopskirt. You, Sylvia, can take a suit-case and a kodak and travel alone to Siam; and you can teach in a college alongside of men and do any number of things my mother would have dropped dead to think about. And," she added quizzically, "it gives me heart failure myself sometimes, just thinking about it all. I can't make you throw your kodak away, and I wouldn't if I could, any more than I'd want you to sit up all night sewing clothes to wear to your school-teaching when you can buy better ones already made that have real style. It tickles me that some women have learned that it's weak-minded to ma.s.sage and paraffine their wrinkles out--those things, Sylvia, strike me as downright immoral. What I've been wondering is whether I can do anything for the kind of girls we have at Elizabeth House beyond giving them a place to sleep, and I guess you've struck the idea with that word efficiency. No girl born to-day, particularly in a town like this, is going back to make her own soap out of grease and lye in her back yard. But she's got to learn to do something well or she'll starve or go to the bad; or if she doesn't have to work she'll fool her life away doing nothing. Now you poke a few holes in my ideas, Sylvia."

"Please, Aunt Sally, don't think that because I've been to college I can answer all those questions! I'm just beginning to study them. But the lady of the daguerreotype in hoops marks one era, and the kodak girl in a short skirt and shirt-waist another. Women had to spend a good deal of time proving that their brains could stand the strain of higher education--that they could take the college courses prescribed for men.

That's all been settled now, but we can't stop there. A college education for women is all right, but we must help the girl who can't go to college to do her work well in the office and department store and factory."

"Or to feed a baby so it won't die of colic, and to keep ptomaine poison out of her ice box!" added Mrs. Owen.

"Exactly," replied Sylvia.

"Suppose a girl like Marian had gone to college just as you did, what would it have done for her?"

"A good deal, undoubtedly. It would have given her wider interests and sobered her, and broadened her chances of happiness."

"Maybe so," remarked Mrs. Owen; and then a smile stole over her face. "I reckon you can hardly call Marian a kodak girl. She's more like one of these flashlight things they set off with a big explosion. Only time I ever got caught in one of those pictures was at a meeting of the Short-Horn Breeders' a.s.sociation last week. They fired off that photograph machine to get a picture for the 'Courier'--I've been prodding them for not printing more farm and stock news--and a man sitting next to me jumped clean out of his boots and yelled fire. I had to go over to the 'Courier' office and see the editor--that Atwill is a pretty good fellow when you get used to him--to make sure they didn't guy us farmers for not being city broke. As for Marian, folks like her!"

"No one can help liking her. She's a girl of impulses and her impulses are all healthy and sound. And her good fellowship and good feeling are inexhaustible. She came over to see me at Elizabeth House the other evening--had Allen bring her in his machine and leave her. The girls were singing songs and amusing themselves in the parlor, and Marian took off her hat and made herself at home with them. She sang several songs, and then got to 'cutting up' and did some of those dances she's picked up somewhere--did them well too. But with all her nonsense she has a lot of good common sense, and she will find a place for herself. She will get married one of these days and settle down beautifully."

"Allen?"