The group that had foregathered about Mrs. Ramsey's tea-table that Thursday afternoon had scattered and gone its several ways. The last of them was bidding her adieu as her husband entered and joined her brothers, who were lingering for a farewell word with her, each occupied in characteristic fashion, John gazing into the fire that smouldered on the grate, for it was a raw and chilly afternoon, and Frank endeavoring to coax a last cup of tea from the silver tea-ball and the still steaming kettle.

"If you really want another cup, Frank, let me have the tea-ball refilled," Mrs. Ramsey said, and then laying her hand on her elder brother's shoulder, "A new Lincoln penny for your thoughts, Jack. You look as if they might be romantic, but I suppose you are really off on the quest of the blooming bacillus or the meandering microbe, or hanging over—what is it you call your garden beds of disease—a culture?"

He looked up and patted her hand. "It is too bad not to be able to be a hero to one's own sister, but the truth is, I wasn't thinking at all, just wool-gathering. By the way, Frank, are you going to motor down to that meeting of Miss Holland's to-night?"

"Wool-gathering, he calls it!" said the younger man, letting his lump of sugar clatter on his saucer. "I'd say it was all cry and no wool; at least you are pulling none over my eyes. Am I going to motor down to hear the protests of the proletariat to-night? No, dear brother, I am not. When I go out to mingle with the down-trodden and oppressed I take the 'L'; a surface car would be even more appropriate, but they take forever, and I compromise on the 'L,' but you never did have any sense of dramatic fitness."

"Might I ask why this sudden interest in the militant laboring ladies?" said Ramsey, drawing up his chair before the fire, and lighting a cigarette. "Are you going to obtrude your somewhat massive personality upon the scene?"

"Yes, that's what I'd like to know," added Frank.

The doctor laughed rather diffidently. "Why not?" he said. "Why shouldn't I go, if I wish to?"

Frank flung out his hands with a gesture of mock despair. "Now, wouldn't that come and get you!" he said. "I appeal to you, Hilda. You were present; you heard Miss Holland invite me to this Manifesto Makers' meeting. You know she never said a word to Jack; she didn't even look at him. He was foolish enough to let her see that he was already a convert to her little gospel, and therefore no longer in need of her ministrations. But as for me, 'I was a wandering sheep; I did not love the fold,' and hence, as a good missionary, she feels a deep interest in me. Off and on, I should say at least fifty Colorado women have tried to make a suffragist of me. Some of them were very pretty," he added reminiscently, "and I've noticed that the prettier they are the longer it takes 'em to make me see the error of my ways. Now with Miss Holland, I wouldn't mind letting her tinker with my political views so long as we both shall live."

"Frank, you are incorrigible," said his sister. "If Miss Holland knew what a flighty, inconsequent infant you are, she wouldn't waste a thought on you, let alone a whole evening. What makes you want to go, anyhow?"

"What's the use of her wasting thoughts on a solemn dub like our brother?" he demanded aggrievedly. "What business has he trailing the soap-boxing suffragers around when he is about to take upon himself vows to cleave only to the daughter of a militant 'Anti' leader, some time when he can jar himself loose from his professional cares long enough for a honeymoon?"

"I'm afraid, Jack, you will find your prospective mother-in-law quite as strenuous as the most ardent of the suffragists," said his sister. "I haven't gone into this thing at all, I haven't time, but it is certainly amusing to watch the 'Antis' outdo even the most ardent suffragettes by way of proving their contention that woman's sphere is home. If they were consistent, they would never appear in public——"

"Except by 'Now comes the counsel for the defendant,'" interrupted Frank, "but they never are. There is a little bunch of them in Colorado who have failed to command the same attention in politics that their money imposes upon the social world, so they rush into type and get themselves interviewed and asked to speak when they come East, all by way of proving their sensitive and shrinking nature. I don't agree with the suffragists, not a little bit, but I can fraternize with them; they are sincere, but none of the 'Antis' for me; never saw one yet who wasn't either a snob or so narrow-minded that a toothpick would look like the Brooklyn Bridge by comparison."

"Hear, hear!" cried Jack. "Miss Holland has certainly made an impression upon you; not that I see what difference it makes, since women already vote where you hail from."

"That just goes to show how foolish a smart man can be," replied his brother cheerfully. "You think because you may have a vote on the enfranchisement of women that it is very important what you think, but is it? Not at all. But with me it is different. I've paid office rent in Denver for two years, and spent a third of the time here or in Washington. I've looked in on two State conventions, and forgot to register at the last election, but because I come from Colorado I am considered an authority on woman suffrage, and when I say it's no good, and swell out my chest and look gloomy, it has great weight, great weight!" He leaned back in his chair and gave way to unseemly mirth as he recalled some occasion on which he had evidently hoaxed some trusting reporter.

"Nonsense, Frank," his brother-in-law answered. "I don't believe you know the first thing about politics or suffrage, or what the women have done or haven't done."

"There you wrong me," the young man answered gravely. "The first thing to know in politics is when to come into the game and when to keep out. Personally, I can't make my firm believe that it is cheaper to buy the other fellows' men after they are elected than it is to try to elect our own, and have them raise the ante on us, but they'll come to it after a while. As to the women, bless you, voting doesn't change their nature, and so long as women are willing to believe what men tell them, it's mighty unsafe to trust them with the ballot. Before you know it, they'll find us out, and then you'll see the first result of the suffragist dream of heaven on earth—there'll be no more marrying or giving in marriage. Oh, I'm dead against it!"

They all joined in the laughter that followed this sally, and Hilda said thoughtfully, "If you boys are intent on this meeting, I'll hurry dinner, for they probably begin early." As she rose to go, Frank caught her hand with the piteous entreaty, "Oh, please make my big brother take his marbles and go home. He wasn't asked to this party. Miss Holland didn't say a thing to him. I don't see why he has to have first show with all the pretty girls in New York!"

"When Miss Holland knows you, and all your native charm, she will never smile again upon your older brother," laughed his sister, "but in the meantime I suppose it's an open meeting, and we can't prevent his going. But don't worry; his fatal beauty will but serve as a foil to your more sparkling type. Besides, with your vivid imagination, unhampered by a slavish subserviency to facts, you should be able to furnish canards that will occupy all Miss Holland's time for a month."

As she left the room her husband opened the door, and her brothers rose and remained standing until it was closed after her.

"If all women were like her——" Frank said impulsively, but Ramsey stopped him.

"If half of them were like her," he said reverently, "I would be in favor of turning the government over to them, certain that the hand that rocks the cradle would never give this storm-tossed old world more shaking up than is good for it."