If murderous thoughts were as potent as daggers, Persis would never have fitted another gown. Annabel was reaching the point where self-control was difficult. Young again! Again! Even her reflection in the mirror and the knowledge that the new dress was becoming, failed to restore her equanimity.

Yet in the end it was Annabel who scored. For when at length she crossed Persis' threshold, a young man happened to be pa.s.sing. A ravishing smile banished Annabel's look of sullen resentment. Her white-gloved hand fluttered in greeting.

The young fellow swung upon his heel, his boyish face flushing in undisguised rapture. He waited till Annabel reached the sidewalk, took the pink-lined parasol from her hand with an air of proud possession, and the two walked away together.

From the window Persis looked grimly after them. "Make the most of this chance," she apostrophized the pair. "I'm getting ready to take your case in hand."

CHAPTER IV

THE WOMAN'S CLUB

Persis Dale was under no misapprehension, regarding her standing in the community. She fully appreciated the fact that she was a pillar of Clematis society and would have accepted as her due the complimentary implication of Mrs. Warren's post-card, even if its duplicates had not offered a similar tribute to at least thirty of her acquaintances. The invitations were all written in Mrs. Warren's near-Spencerian hand, the t's expanding blottily at the tips, the curves of the capitals suggesting in their sudden murky expansion, the Mississippi River after its union with the muddy Missouri.

"As one of the representative women of Clematis, you are invited to attend a meeting at the home of Mrs. Sophia Warren, Sat.u.r.day the 12th inst. at 2 P. M. Object of meeting, the organization of a Woman's Club for the purpose of expanding the horizon of the individual members and uplifting the community as a whole. Please be prompt."

The arrival of the postman while Persis was busy with a fitting, gave Joel time to examine the mail and frame a withering denunciation of Mrs. Warren's plan. He sprung the same upon his sister with pyrotechnic effect a little later.

"A woman's club! Clematis is getting on. Pretty soon the women'll be smoking cigarettes and wanting to run for mayor and letting their own rightful sphere go to the everlasting bow-wows. Expand their horizons!

What's the good of a horizon to a woman who's got a house to look after, and a man around to do her thinking for her? If women folks nowadays worked as hard as their grandmothers did, we wouldn't hear any of this nonsense about clubs. As good old Doctor Watts says:

"'For Satan finds some mischief still For idle hands to do.'"

Persis, arranging a cascade of lace, over the voluptuous bosom of her adjustable bust-form, stood back to get the effect. "Maybe you're right, Joel," she acknowledged placidly, "but I'm going to that meeting at Sophia Warren's Sat.u.r.day if I have to sew all Friday night to get my week's work out of the way."

In the face of masculine scoffs, which sometimes, as in Joel's case, became denunciatory rather than humorous, about twenty of the representative thirty Mrs. Warren had called from her list of acquaintances, accepted the invitation and were on hand at the hour designated. The opposition of sundry husbands and fathers, as well as of those unattached males who disapproved of women's clubs on general principles, had lent to the project the seductive flavor of forbidden fruit. The women who donned their Sunday best that Sat.u.r.day afternoon had an exhilarating sense of adventure. Even Annabel Sinclair, invariably bored by the society of her own s.e.x, made her appearance with the others and from her post of observation in the corner, noted the effect of lavender on Gladys Wells' complexion, and wondered why Thad West's mother didn't try anti-fat.

As the clock struck two, Mrs. Warren rose with a Jack-in-the-box effect from behind the table where she had ensconced herself after welcoming the last arrival. Mrs. Warren had taught school before her marriage and under the stimulus of her present responsibility, her voice and manner reverted to their earlier pedagogical precision. As she rapped the a.s.sembly to order, she had every appearance of a teacher calling on the A-cla.s.s to recite.

"Ladies, I am glad to see so many of you punctual. Miss Persis Dale has sent word that she will be detained for a little by the pressure of Sat.u.r.day's work, but that she will join us later, and undoubtedly other tardy arrivals will have excuses equally good. And now, ladies, the first business of the afternoon will be the election of a chairman."

"Oh, you've got to be chairman," observed Mrs. West conversationally from the largest armchair. "None of the rest of us know enough."

Corroborative nods and murmurs approved the suggestion, and Mrs. Warren acknowledged the compliment by a prim little bow.

"Do I understand you to make this in the form of a motion, Mrs. West?"

"Why, ye-es, I s'pose so," returned Mrs. West, visibly startled by the suggestion that she had performed that feat without a realizing sense of its momentous character.

"Is there a second to this motion?"

The chilling silence, which the first hint of parliamentary procedure imposes on the most voluble gathering, unaccustomed to its technicalities, was broken at length, by the voice of Susan Fitzgerald, who said faintly, "I do," and blushed to the roots of her hair.

"You have heard the motion, ladies. All in favor signify it, by saying _aye_."

Twenty voices in unison gave an effect at once businesslike and harmonious; and the representative women of Clematis looked vaguely pleased to find their end so easily attained.

"Contrary-minded, the same sign." A breathless pause while the a.s.sembly waited for the daring opposition to manifest itself. "The motion appears to be carried, carried unanimously, ladies. I thank you for your confidence. We shall now proceed to consider the best method of organizing ourselves so as to expand the horizon of the individual members"--Mrs. Warren was quoting, unabashed, from her own post-card--"in addition to uplifting the community as a whole."

The chairman went into temporary eclipse by taking her seat, and the gathering no longer frozen into speechlessness by the realization that there was a motion before the house, rippled out in brook-like fluency.

"I think a card club would be just too grand for anything," gushed Gladys Wells with an effect of girlishness, quite misleading. "My cousin in Springfield belongs to a card club, and they have just the grandest times. Everybody pays ten cents each meeting, and that goes for the prize. My cousin won a perfectly grand cut-gla.s.s b.u.t.ter dish."

"I don't see how parlor gambling would help uplift the community,"

commented Mrs. Richards coldly from the opposite side of the room.

The seemingly inevitable clash was averted by Susan Fitzgerald, who rose and addressed the chair, a feat of such reckless daring as to reduce the a.s.sembly to instant dumbness.

"Mrs. President, I think a suffrage club is what we need in Clematis 'most of anything. We women have submitted to being downtrodden long enough, and the only way for us to force men to give us our rights is to organize and stand shoulder to shoulder. It's time for us to arise--to arise in our might and defy the oppressor."

Susan subsided, mopping her moist forehead as if her oratorical effort had occupied an hour, rather than a trifle over thirty seconds.

Gradually the meeting recovered from its temporary paralysis.

"If it's going to be that sort of a club, I'm sure Robert wouldn't approve of my having anything to do with it," Mrs. Hornblower remarked with great distinctness, though apparently addressing her remarks to her right-hand neighbor. "Robert isn't what you'd call a tyrant, but he believes that a man ought to be master in his own house. If he thought there was any danger of my getting interested in such subjects, he'd put his foot right down and that would be the end of it."

The ghost of a t.i.tter swept over the gathering. Mrs. Hornblower, though fond of flaunting her wifely subjection in the faces of her acquaintances, never failed to get her own way in any domestic crisis where she had taken the trouble to form a preference. And on the other hand, poor Susan Fitzgerald, for all her bl.u.s.tering defiance of the tyrant s.e.x, could in reality be overawed and browbeaten by any male not yet out of kilts. Before the phantom-like laughter had quite died away, Mrs. Hornblower added majestically: "But I don't want my opinions to count too much either way as I may be leaving Clematis before long."

The expansion of the horizon of the representative women of Clematis, with the incidental uplift of the community, was immediately relegated to the background of interest. "Leaving Clematis!" exclaimed a dozen voices, the accent of shocked protest easily perceptible above mere surprise and curiosity.

Mrs. Hornblower, in her evident enjoyment of the sensation of which she was the center, was in no hurry to explain.

"We're thinking of selling the farm and investing in an apple orchard,"

she announced at length. "Robert's worked hard all his life, and we think it's about time he began to take things easy. The comp'ny undertakes to do all the work of taking care of the orchard and marketing the fruit for a quarter of our net profits, and that'll leave me and Robert free to travel 'round and enjoy ourselves. We're looking over plans now for our villa."

Even Annabel Sinclair straightened herself suddenly, galvanized into closer attention by that magic word.

"I've heard tell that there was lots of money in apples," exclaimed Mrs. West. "But I didn't s'pose there was enough so that folks wouldn't need to do any work to get it out."

"You see, people in general don't appreciate what science and system can do," patronizingly explained Mrs. Hornblower. "If you'd read some of the literature the Apple of Eden Investment Comp'ny sends us, it would be an eye-opener."

"Ladies, ladies!" expostulated the chairman, "we are forgetting the object of our meeting." Then temporarily setting aside her official duties in favor of her responsibility as hostess, she hurried forward to greet a new arrival. "So glad to see you, Mrs. Leveridge. But I'm sorry you couldn't persuade young Mrs. Thompson to accompany you."

"She'd agreed to come," replied Mrs. Leveridge, loosening her bonnet-strings and sighing. "But at the last minute she found it wasn't possible."

The room rustled expectantly. There is always a chance that the reason for a bride's regrets may be of interest.

"Nothing serious, I hope," said Mrs. West insinuatingly.

Mrs. Leveridge's sigh was provocative of further questions.

"Well, no, and then again, yes. It isn't anything like a death in the family. But you don't have to live long to find out that death ain't the worst thing."

"My goodness, Minerva," exclaimed Susan Fitzgerald, aghast. "What's happened?"