"Yesh, it's me, Mabel; whatcher want," answered the Colonel, bracing himself against the courthouse. He always called Acres "Mabel," after his wife.

"Well, how do you feel--pretty good?" said the little gossip, grinning up in the old red face.

"No, shur! I do not. I feel like a child on a cold night wish all the bedclothes pulled off me--thatsh how I feel. How do you feel?"

"Same here, Colonel!"

[Ill.u.s.tration: "'_I want to ash you a delicate question--where ish the ladies? I 'aven't sheen a woman in four hours_'"]

"Mabel, me boy," whispered the old man, swaying gently as he attempted to fix his eyes upon the other's face, "I want to ash you a delicate question: where ish the ladies? I haven't sheen a woman in four hours, Mabel! Think of that and in a town full of the pretties' women in thish state. What does it mean? Thash what I want to ash you. I'm famished, I'm thirshty, for the shight of a pretty face!"

"That's so," said Acres; "what does it mean? Hadn't thought of it before, but----"

"Oh, my G.o.d! what would thish world be without the ladies, Mabel! If we wish 'em like thish in four hours, how could we live wishout 'em forever! We could not, shur!" He began to weep, a poor old man of the past, standing in the twilight of the village street, looking up and down like a lost child crying for its mother. Then he moved on, refusing "Mabel's" arm.

Men began to close their offices and shops; window sashes banged; keys rattled in locks. More men appeared upon the streets. They lighted cigars, loitered, not quite ready yet to go home. When a man knows his wife and daughters are at home, he feels safe. He is in no hurry to be there himself. This was the hour when every man in Jordantown was accustomed to know that. If any one had asked a single one of them the question, "Where's your wife?" he would have answered, "At home, of course!" It was only the Colonel, half seas over, who had his doubts, but the Colonel was notoriously psychic where women were concerned.

At this very moment a queer thing happened: a stream of women poured into the square and took their way down both sides of it, almost treading upon the toes of the men as they pa.s.sed. And they were walking leisurely.

These were undoubtedly the same women who had pa.s.sed at four o'clock on their way to the Civic League and Cemetery a.s.sociation. Every man in the streets recognized them. Yet they were not the same. They did not return salutations. For the first time the men were ignored, not exactly snubbed, but literally not seen by the women in Jordantown. And each man was alone, there were not enough of them together to talk about it; they could only feel and wonder, as they stood staring in amazement at those fluttering white and black and blue and pink figures disappearing around corners and down the avenues.

The sense of femininity is only a sense of weakness. And what we call masculinity is only the sense of strength, which may belong to women as well as to men under the same conditions. The men on the square had just witnessed a miracle, never seen before in this world--the rise of egotism in the feminine portion of the community, which caused every one of them to enter that zone of man on an equal footing with men in consciousness. And naturally the men did not understand that. They were so dazed that they could not even discuss it with one another. What they had experienced was too subtle to put into words. Not a man of them looked any other man in the face as they followed those women home. But every one of them was asking himself some question: "What's my wife doing out so late?" "Why didn't Selah Adams speak to me?" "What in h.e.l.l's that old cat, Susan Walton, up to now, wading by me as if she owned the town?" "Oh, it's nothing! they were embarra.s.sed at being out so late!" "But why then did they walk so infernally like Odd Fellows coming home from the lodge at midnight?"

"I'll know presently!" said Magnis Carter, as he flirted around the corner into the avenue. "I'll ask Carrie!"

And, as good as his word, he did.

"Carrie, what's the Civic League and Cemetery a.s.sociation mean by keeping such late hours?" he asked as he sat down to dinner.

"There is no such organization here any more, Magnis."

"Isn't? What's become of it? You women get mad and tear up your Magna Charter?"

"No, we've changed it, going to get out another charter."

"So, you've changed it? Going to be an Odd Fellows lodge now?" he laughed.

"Something like that," she answered coolly.

"Can't afford it, my dear; to be an Odd Fellow costs like thunder!"

"We have plenty of funds," was the astonishing reply.

"Speak as if you'd inherited the Mosely Estate."

Silence on the part of Carrie, who sat at the other end of the table like a Dominique hen brooding strange eggs.

"Hear anything about the will?"

When there was no answer to this question, Carter looked up at his wife.

"I say did you hear anything about Sarah Mosely's will?"

Still no reply.

"Then you did hear something? What was it?" His manner had become suddenly serious.

"You'll know soon enough, Magnis."

"Can't you tell me?"

"No, I cannot!"

"Secrets from your husband?"

"I never resent your keeping your affairs from me, why should you object to my keeping mine from you?" she answered coolly.

"Good Lord, Carrie, you look at me as if you'd filed papers for divorce!

And when did the Mosely will become one of your affairs, I'd like to know?"

She declined to tell him that. She poked her foot about under the table with the absent-minded stare a woman always has when she is trying to find the electric bell with her extremities. She found it and pressed all the current on, so that the maid came with an injured put-upon air to clear the table.

Carter continued to regard his wife as if she had become a phenomenon, and as if he was entirely ignorant of the laws which had exalted her into the unknown. When the servant disappeared with the tray of indignantly rattling dishes he began again.

"Look here, Carrie, if there's any news about the disposition of that woman's estate, I ought to have it for the _Signal_. We go to press to-morrow."

"You'll get all the news you are ent.i.tled to have in time to publish this week, Magnis, and through the proper channels."

Three doors farther down the avenue Selah Adams sat upon the front veranda, looking like the vestal virgin of the moon.

She had taken the precaution to enter the house through the back door when she returned with the other women. The Colonel was fuming in the library. She could hear him through the open door as she fled noiselessly up the staircase.

"Not a light in the house, by Jove! First time in forty years I've come home to a darkened house. No candle in the window to guide an old man's wandering feet, n.o.body to greet me, no slippers--no nothing!" he moaned.

And Selah, leaning over the banisters above, could hear him stumbling over the chairs. She knew what that meant. The Colonel regarded all chairs as his mortal enemies when he was in a certain condition. She heard the crash of the big Morris chair as it struck the wall, and feet attacking it furiously. Then the Colonel lumbered out into the hall.

"Hey, there! Tom! Becky! Where's everybody? By Gad! if somebody don't come, I'll--I'll----"

"What is it, father?" came Selah's voice, tinkling like ice in a gla.s.s.

"Selah! whatsh thish mean?" he roared.

"What does what mean, father?"

"No light! I've just been a.s.shaulted in my own house!" he shouted.

"a.s.saulted?" she giggled, turning the switch.

The hall below was instantly flooded with light. She beheld the Colonel leaning against the newel post, looking up but not seeing her. He was lifting first one foot and then the other and feeling them tenderly with his hands.