"Why, Uncle!" cried Alice.

"Oh, Mr. Sawyer understands me!" said Uncle Ike. "In the Middle Ages, when women occupied the highest position that has fallen to her lot since the days of Adam, the housework was done by menials and scullions.

Has the world progressed when woman is pulled down from her high estate and this life of drudgery is called her sphere? Beg your pardon, Mr.

Sawyer, but there should be no more limit fixed to the usefulness of woman than there is to the usefulness of man."

"But," persisted Alice, "I don't think Mr. Sawyer means that exactly.

He means a woman should stay at home and look after her family."

"Well," said Uncle Ike, "so should the man. I am inclined to think if the father spent more time at home, it would be for the advantage of both sons and daughters."

"But," said Quincy, "do you think it is for the best interests of the community that woman should force her way into all branches of industry and compete with man for a livelihood?"

"Why not?" said Uncle Ike. "In the old days when they didn't work, for they didn't know how and didn't want to, because they thought it was beneath them, if a man died, his wife and children became dependent upon some brother or sister or uncle or aunt, and they were obliged to provide for them out of their own small income or savings. In those days it was respectable to be genteelly poor, and starve rather than work and live on the fat of the land. Nothing has ever done so much to increase the self-respect of woman, and add to her feeling of independence, as the knowledge of the fact that she can support herself." Alice bowed her head and covered her eyes with her hand. "There's nothing personal in what I say," said Uncle Ike. "I am only talking on general principles."

Quincy yearned to say something against Uncle Ike's argument, but how could he advance anything against woman's work when the one who sat before him was a workingwoman and was weeping because she could not work? There was one thing he could do, he could change the subject to one where there was an opportunity for debate. So he said, "Well, Mr.

Pettengill, I presume if you are such an ardent advocate of woman's right or even duty to work, that you are also a supporter of her right to vote."

"That does not follow," replied Uncle Ike. "To be self-reliant, independent, and self-supporting is a pleasure and a duty, and adds to one's self-respect. As voting is done at the present day, I do not see how woman can take part in it and maintain her self-respect.

Improvements no doubt will be made in the manner of voting. The ballot will become secret, and the count will not be disclosed until after the voting is finished. The rum stores will be closed on voting day and an air of respectability will be given to it that it does not now possess.

It ought to be made a legal holiday."

"Granted," said Quincy, "but what has that to do with the question of woman's right to vote?"

"Woman has no inherent right to vote," said Uncle Ike. "The ballot is a privilege, not a right. Why, I remember reading during the war that young soldiers, between eighteen and twenty-one years of age, claimed the ballot as a right, because they were fighting for their country. If voting is a right, what argument could be used against their claim?"

"I remember," added Quincy, "that they argued that 'bullets should win ballots.' Do you think any one should vote who cannot fight?" asked Quincy.

"If he does not shirk his duty between eighteen and forty-five," said Uncle Ike, "he should not be deprived of his ballot when he is older; but the question of woman's voting does not depend upon her ability to fight. The mother at home thinking of her son, the sister thinking of her brother, the wife thinking of her husband, are as loyally fighting for their native land as the soldiers in the field, and no soldier is braver than the hospital nurse, who, day after day and night after night, watches by the bedsides of the wounded, the sick, and the dying.

No, Mr. Sawyer, it is not a question of fighting or bravery."

During the discussion Alice had dried her eyes and was listening to her uncle's words. She now asked a question, "When will women vote, Uncle?"

"When it is deemed expedient for them to do so," replied Uncle Ike. "The full privilege will not be given all at once. They will probably be allowed to vote on some one matter in which they are deeply interested.

Education and the rum question are the ones most likely to be acted upon first. But the full ballot will not come, and now I know Alice will shake her head and say, 'No!' I repeat it--the full ballot will not come for woman until our social superstructure is changed. Woman will not become the political equal of man until she is his social and industrial equal; and until any contract of whatever nature made by a man and a woman may be dissolved by them by mutual consent, without their becoming criminals in the eye of the law, or outcasts in the eyes of society."

At this moment Ezekiel looked in the door and said, "Alice's room is nice and warm now." Advancing, he took her hand and led her from the room. Uncle Ike thanked Quincy for his kindness and followed them.

Quincy sat and thought. The picture that his mind drew placed the woman who had just left his room in a large house, with servants at her command. She was the head of the household, but no menial nor scullion.

She did not work, because he was able and willing to support her. She did not vote, because she felt with him that at home was her sphere of usefulness; and then Quincy thought that what would make this possible was money, money that not he but others had earned, and he knew that without this money the question could not be solved as his mind had pictured it; and he reflected that all women could not have great houses and servants and loving husbands to care for them, and he acknowledged to himself that his solution was a personal, selfish one and not one that would answer for the toiling million's of the working world.

CHAPTER XXII.

AFTER THE GREAT SNOWSTORM.

Mandy was, of course, greatly pleased inwardly because Hiram had come through such a great storm to see her, but, woman-like, she would not show it.

So she said to Hiram, "Your reason is a very good one, and of course I am greatly flattered, but there must be something else besides that.

Now, what have you got to tell me?"

"Well, the fact is, Mandy, I've got two things on my mind. One of 'em is a secret and t'other isn't. I meant to have told you yesterday; but Mr.

Sawyer kept me busy till noon, and the Deacon kept me busy all the afternoon, and I was too tired to come over last night."

"Well," said Mandy, "tell me the secret first. If the other one has kept so long it won't spoil if it's kept a little longer."

Hiram had kept his eyes on the stove since taking his seat, and he then remarked, "I am afraid that cider will spoil unless I get a drink of it pretty soon."

"Well, I declare," cried Mandy, "if I didn't forget to give it to you, after sending Mrs. Crowley down stairs for it, when you was out there in the road."

"That's all right," said Hiram, as he finished the mugful she pa.s.sed him, and handed it back to be refilled. "That sort o' limbers a feller's tongue a bit. Well, the secret is," said Hiram, lowering his voice, "that when Huldy saw me gettin' ready to go out, sez she, 'Where are you goin'?' 'Over to Mr. Pettengill's,' sez I. Then sez she, 'Will you wait a minute till I write a note?' 'Certainly,' sez I. And when she brought me the note, sez she, 'Please give that to Mr. Pettengill and don't let anybody else see it.' Then sez I to her, 'No, ma'am;' but I sez to myself, 'n.o.body but Mandy.'" And Hiram took from an inside pocket an envelope, addressed to Mr. Ezekiel Pettengill, and showed it to Mandy.

Then he put it back quickly in his pocket.

"Well, what of that?" asked Mandy. "That's no great secret."

"Well, not in itself," said Hiram; "but I am willing to bet a year's salary agin a big red apple that those two people have made up and are engaged reg'lar fashion."

"You don't say so," cried Mandy, "what makes you think so?"

"Well, a number of things," said Hiram. "I overheard the Deacon say to Huldy, 'It will be pretty lonesome for us one of these days,' and then you see Mrs. Mason, she is just as good as pie to me all the time, and that shows something has pleased her more than common; and then you see Huldy has that sort of look about her that girls have when their market's made, and they feel so happy that they can't help showing it.

You see, Mandy, I'm no chicken. I've had lots of experience."

What Mandy might have said in reply to this remark will never be known, for at this juncture Ezekiel entered the room and pa.s.sed through on his way to the wood-shed.

"Now's my time," said Hiram, and he arose and followed him out.

Ezekiel was piling up some wood which he was to take to Alice's room, when Hiram came up beside him and slyly pa.s.sed him the note. Then Hiram looked out of the wood-shed window at the storm, which had lost none of its fury, while Ezekiel read the note.

"Are you going home soon?" asked Ezekiel.

"Well, I guess I'll try it again," said Hiram, "as soon as I get warm and kinder limbered up."

"I guess I'll go back with you," said Ezekiel. "We will take Swiss with us; two men and a dog ought to be enough for a little snowstorm like this."

"You won't find it a little one," said Hiram, "when you get out in the road, but I guess the three on us can pull through."

Ezekiel went upstairs with the wood and Hiram resumed his seat before the kitchen fire.

"What did I tell you?" said Hiram to Mandy. "'Zeke's going back with me.

She has writ him to come over and see her. Now you see if you don't lose your apple."

"I didn't bet," said Mandy; "but what was that other thing you were going to tell me that was no secret?"

"Oh, that's about another couple," said Hiram. "Tilly James is engaged."

"Well, it's about time," said Mandy. "Which one of them?"

"Samuel Hill," replied Hiram, "and she managed it fust rate. You know the boys have been flocking round her for more than a year. Old Ben James, her pa, told me he'd got to put in a new hitchin' post. You see, there has been Robert Wood and 'Manuel Howe and Arthur Scates and Cobb's twins and Ben Bates and Sam Hill, but Samuel was the cutest one of the lot."