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+Project Gutenberg's Pray You, Sir, Whose Daughter?, by Helen H. Gardener
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Pray You, Sir, Whose Daughter?
+
+Author: Helen H. Gardener
+
+Release Date: March 16, 2013 [EBook #37355]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK PRAY YOU, SIR, WHOSE DAUGHTER? ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by David Widger
+
+
+
+
+
+
+PRAY YOU, SIR, WHOSE DAUGHTER?
+
+By Helen H. Gardener
+
+
+R. F. Fenno & Company
+
+9 and 11 East 16th Street
+
+New York
+
+1892
+
+
+I saw a woman sleeping. In her sleep she dreampt Life stood before her,
+and held in each hand a gift--in the one Love, in the other Freedom. And
+she said to the woman, "Choose!"
+
+And the woman waited long; and she said: "Freedom!" And Life said, "Thou
+hast well chosen. If thou hadst said, 'Love,' I would have given thee
+that thou didst ask for; and I would have gone from thee, and returned
+to thee no more. Now, the day will come when I shall return. In that
+day I shall bear both gifts in one hand." I heard the woman laugh in her
+sleep.
+
+Olive Schreener's Dreams.
+
+
+
+DEDICATED
+
+With the love and admiration of the Author,
+
+To Her Husband
+
+Who is ever at once her first, most severe, and most sympathetic critic,
+whose encouragement and interest in her work never flags; whose abiding
+belief in human rights, without sex limitations, and in equality of
+opportunity leaves scant room in his great soul to harbor patience with
+sex domination in a land which boasts of freedom for all, and embodies
+its symbol of Liberty in the form of the only legally disqualified and
+unrepresented class to be found upon its shores.
+
+
+
+
+PREFACE.
+
+In the following story the writer shows us what poverty and dependence
+are in their revolting outward aspects, as well as in their crippling
+effects on all the tender sentiments of the human soul. Whilst the many
+suffer for want of the decencies of life, the few have no knowledge of
+such conditions.
+
+They require the poor to keep clean, where water by landlords is
+considered a luxury; to keep their garments whole, where they have
+naught but rags to stitch together, twice and thrice worn threadbare.
+The improvidence of the poor as a valid excuse for ignorance, poverty,
+and vice, is as inadequate as is the providence of the rich, for their
+virtue, luxury, and power. The artificial conditions of society are
+based on false theories of government, religion, and morals, and not
+upon the decrees of a God.
+
+In this little volume we have a picture, too, of what the world would
+call a happy family, in which a naturally strong, honest woman is
+shrivelled into a mere echo of her husband, and the popular sentiment of
+the class to which she belongs. The daughter having been educated in a
+college with young men, and tasted of the tree of knowledge, and,
+like the Gods, knowing good and evil, can no longer square her life by
+opinions she has outgrown; hence with her parents there is friction,
+struggle, open revolt, though conscientious and respectful withal.
+
+Three girls belonging to different classes in society; each illustrates
+the false philosophy on which woman's character is based, and each in a
+different way, in the supreme moment of her life, shows the necessity of
+self-reliance and self-support.
+
+As the wrongs of society can be more deeply impressed on a large class
+of readers in the form of fiction than by essays, sermons, or the facts
+of science, I hail with pleasure all such attempts by the young writers
+of our day. The slave has had his novelist and poet, the farmer his,
+the victims of ignorance and poverty theirs, but up to this time the
+refinements of cruelty suffered by intelligent, educated women, have
+never been painted in glowing colors, so that the living picture could
+be seen and understood. It is easy to rouse attention to the grosser
+forms of suffering and injustice, but the humiliations of spirit are not
+so easily described and appreciated.
+
+A class of earnest reformers have, for the last fifty years, in the
+press, the pulpit, and on the platform, with essays, speeches, and
+constitutional arguments before legislative assemblies, demanded the
+complete emancipation of women from the political, religious, and social
+bondage she now endures; but as yet few see clearly the need of larger
+freedom, and the many maintain a stolid indifference to the demand.
+
+I have long waited and watched for some woman to arise to do for her sex
+what Mrs. Stowe did for the black race in "Uncle Tom's Cabin," a book
+that did more to rouse the national conscience than all the glowing
+appeals and constitutional arguments that agitated our people during
+half a century. If, from an objective point of view, a writer could
+thus eloquently portray the sorrows of a subject race, how much more
+graphically should some woman describe the degradation of sex.
+
+In Helen Gardener's stories, I see the promise, in the near future,
+of such a work of fiction, that shall paint the awful facts of woman's
+position in living colors that all must see and feel. The civil and
+canon law, state and church alike, make the mothers of the race a
+helpless, ostracised class, pariahs of a corrupt civilization. In view
+of woman's multiplied wrongs, my heart oft echoes the Russian poet who
+said: "God has forgotten where he hid the key to woman's emancipation."
+Those who know the sad facts of woman's life, so carefully veiled
+from society at large, will not consider the pictures in this story
+overdrawn.
+
+The shallow and thoughtless may know nothing of their existence, while
+the helpless victims, not being able to trace the causes of their
+misery, are in no position to state their wrongs themselves.
+
+Nevertheless all the author describes in this sad story, and worse
+still, is realized in everyday life, and the dark shadows dim the
+sunshine in every household.
+
+The apathy of the public to the wrongs of woman is clearly seen at this
+hour, in propositions now under consideration in the Legislature of New
+York. Though two infamous bills have been laid before select committees,
+one to legalize prostitution, and one to lower the age of consent, the
+people have been alike ignorant and indifferent to these measures. When
+it was proposed to take a fragment of Central Park for a race course, a
+great public meeting of protest was called at once, and hundreds of men
+hastened to Albany to defeat the measure.
+
+But the proposed invasion of the personal rights of woman, and the
+wholesale desecration of childhood has scarce created a ripple on the
+surface of society. The many do not know what laws their rulers are
+making, and the few do not care, so long as they do not feel the iron
+teeth of the law in their own flesh. Not one father in the House or
+Senate would willingly have his wife, sister, or daughter subject to
+these infamous bills proposed for the daughters of the people. Alas! for
+the degradation of sex, even in this republic. When one may barter away
+all that is precious to pure and innocent childhood at the age of ten
+years, you may as well talk of a girl's safety with wild beasts in the
+tangled forests of Africa, as in the present civilizations of England
+and America, the leading nations on the globe.
+
+Some critics say that every one knows and condemns these facts in our
+social life, and that we do not need fiction to intensify the public
+disgust. Others say, Why call the attention of the young and the
+innocent to the existence of evils they should never know. The majority
+of people do not watch legislative proceedings.
+
+To keep our sons and daughters innocent, we must warn them of the
+dangers that beset their path on every side.
+
+Ignorance under no circumstances ensures safety. Honor protected by
+knowledge, is safer than innocence protected by ignorance.
+
+A few brave women are laboring to-day to secure for their less capable,
+less thoughtful, less imaginative sisters, a recognition of a true
+womanhood based on individual rights. There is just one remedy for the
+social complications based on sex, and that is equality for woman in
+every relation in life.
+
+Men must learn to respect her as an equal factor in civilization, and
+she must learn to respect herself as mother of the race. Womanhood is
+the great primal fact of her existence; marriage and maternity, its
+incidents.
+
+This story shows that the very traits of character which society (whose
+opinions are made and modified by men) considers most important and
+charming in woman to ensure her success in social life, are the very
+traits that ultimately lead to her failure.
+
+Self-effacement, self-distrust, dependence and desire to please,
+compliance, deference to the judgment and will of another, are what make
+young women, in the opinion of these believers in sex domination, most
+agreeable; but these are the very traits that lead to her ruin.
+
+The danger of such training is well illustrated in the sad end of Ettie
+Berton. When the trials and temptations of life come, then each one
+must decide for herself, and hold in her own hands the reins of action.
+Educated women of the passing generation chafe under the old order of
+things, but, like Mrs. Foster in the present volume, are not strong
+enough to swim up stream. But girls like Gertrude, who in the college
+curriculum have measured their powers and capacities with strong young
+men and found themselves their equals, have outgrown this superstition
+of divinely ordained sex domination. The divine rights of kings, nobles,
+popes, and bishops have long been questioned, and now that of sex is
+under consideration and from the signs of the times, with all other
+forms of class and caste, it is destined soon to pass away.
+
+Elizabeth Cady Stanton
+
+
+
+
+PRAY YOU, SIR, WHOSE DAUGHTER?
+
+
+
+
+I
+
+To say that Mrs. Foster was cruel, that she lacked sympathy with the
+unfortunate, or that she was selfish, would be to state only the dark
+half of a truism that has a wider application than class or sex could
+give it; a truism whose boundary lines, indeed, are set by nothing short
+of the ignorance of human beings hedged in by prejudice and handicapped
+by lack of imagination. So when she sat, with dainty folded hands whose
+jeweled softness found fitting background on the crimson velvet of her
+trailing gown, and announced that she could endure everything associated
+with, and felt deep sympathy for, the poor if it were not for the
+besetting sin of uncleanliness that found its home almost invariably
+where poverty dwelt, it would be unjust to pronounce her hard-hearted or
+base.
+
+"It is all nonsense to say that the poor need be so dirty," she
+announced, as she held her splendid feather fan in one hand and caressed
+the dainty tips of the white plumes with the tips of fingers only less
+dainty and white.
+
+"I have rarely ever seen a really poor man, woman, or child who was at
+the same time really clean looking in person, and as to clothes--"
+
+She broke off with an impatient and disgusted little shrug, as if to
+say--what was quite true--that even the touch of properly descriptive
+words held for her more soilure than she cared to bear contact with.
+
+John Martin laughed. Then he essayed to banter his hostess, addressing
+his remarks meanwhile to her daughter.
+
+"One could not imagine your mamma a victim of poverty and hunger, much
+less of dirt, Miss Gertrude," he began slowly; "but even that sumptuous
+velvet gown of hers would grow to look more or less--let us say--rusty,
+in time, I fear, if it were the only costume she possessed, and she were
+obliged to eat, cook, wash, iron, sew, and market in it."
+
+The two ladies laughed merrily at the droll suggestion, and Miss
+Gertrude pursed up her lips and developed a decided squint in her eyes
+as she turned them upon the folds of her mother's robe. Then she took up
+Mr. Martin's description where the laugh had broken in upon it.
+
+"Too true, too true," she drawled; "and if she dusted the furniture
+a week or so with that fan, I'm afraid it would lose more or less
+of its--gloss. Mamma quite prides herself upon the delicate
+peach-fuzz-bloom, so to speak, of those feathers. Just look at them!"
+The girl reached over and took the fan from her mother's lap. She spread
+the fine plumes to their fullest capacity, and held them under the rays
+of the brass lamp that stood near their guest. Then she made a flourish
+with it in the direction of the music stand, as if she were intent upon
+whisking the last speck of dust from the sheets of Tannhauser that lay
+on its top A little cry of alarm and protest escaped Mrs. Foster's lips
+and she stretched oat her hand to rescue the beloved fan.
+
+"Gertrude! how can you?" She settled back comfortably against the
+cushions of the low divan with her rescued treasure once more waving in
+gentle gracefulness before her.
+
+"Oh, no," she protested. "Of course one could not work or live
+constantly in one or two gowns and look fresh, but one could look and be
+clean and--and whole. A patch is not pretty I admit, but it is a decided
+improvement upon a bare elbow."
+
+"I don't agree with you at all," smiled her guest; "I don't believe
+I ever saw a patch in all my life that would be an improvement
+upon--upon--" He glanced at the lovely round white arms before him, and
+all three laughed. Mrs. Foster thought of how many Russian baths and
+massage treatments had tended to give the exquisite curve and tint to
+her arm.
+
+"Then beside," smiled Mr. Martin, "a rent or hole may be an immediate
+accident, liable to happen to the best of us. A patch looks like
+premeditated poverty." Gertrude laughed brightly, but her mother did not
+appear to have heard. She reverted to the previous insinuation.
+
+"Oh, well; that is not fair! You know what I mean. I'm talking of elbows
+that burst or wear out--not about those that never were intended to be
+in. Then, besides, it is not the elbow I object to; it is the hole
+one sees it through. _It_ tells a tale of shiftlessness and personal
+untidiness that saps all sympathy for the poverty that compelled the
+long wearing of the garment."
+
+"Why, my dear Mrs. Foster," said Martin, slowly, "I wonder if you have
+any idea of a grade of poverty that simply can't be either whole or
+clean. Did--?"
+
+"I'll give up the whole, but I won't give in on the clean. I can easily
+see how a woman could be too tired, too ill, or too busy to mend a
+garment; I can fancy her not knowing how to sew, or not having thread,
+needles, and patches; but, surely, surely, Mr. Martin, no one living is
+too poor to keep clean. Water is free, and it doesn't take long to take
+a bath. Besides--"
+
+Gertrude looked at her mother with a smile. Then she said with her
+sarcastic little drawl again:--
+
+"Russian, or Turkish?"
+
+"Well, but fun' and nonsense aside, Gertrude," said her mother, "a plain
+hot bath at home would make a new creature out of half the wretches one
+sees or reads of, and--"
+
+"Porcelain lined bath-tub, hot and cold water furnished at all hours.
+Bath-room adjoining each sleeping apartment," laughed Mr. Martin. "What
+a delightful idea you have of abject poverty, Mrs. Foster. I do wish
+Fred could have heard that last remark of yours. I went with his clerk
+one day to collect rents down in Mulberry Street. He had the collection
+of the rents for the Feedour estate on his hands--"
+
+"What's that about the rents of the Feedour estate?" inquired the head
+of the house, extending his hand to their guest as he entered. Mrs.
+Foster put out her hand and her husband touched the tips of her fingers
+to his lips, while Gertrude slipped her arm through her father's and
+drew him to a seat beside her. Her eyes were dancing, and she showed a
+double row of the whitest of teeth.
+
+"Oh, Mr. Martin was just explaining to mamma how your clerk collects
+rent for the porcelain bath-tubs in the Feedour property down in
+Mulberry Street. Mamma thinks that bath-rooms should be free--hot and
+cold water, and all convenient appointments."
+
+Fred Foster looked at their guest for a moment, and then both men burst
+into a hearty laugh.
+
+"I don't see anything to laugh at," protested Mrs. Foster. "Unless you
+are guying me for thinking Mr. Martin in earnest about the tubs being
+rented. I suppose, of course, the bath-rooms go with the apartments,
+and one rent covers the whole of it. In which case, I still insist that
+there is no reason why the poor can't be clean, and if they have only
+one suit of clothes, they can wash them out at night and have them dry
+next morning."
+
+The men laughed again.
+
+"Gertrude, has your mamma read her essay yet before the Ladies' Artistic
+and Ethical Club on the 'Self-Inflicted Sorrows of the Poor?'" asked Mr.
+Foster, pinching his daughter's chin, and allowing a chuckle of humorous
+derision to escape him as he glanced at their guest.
+
+"No," said the girl, a trifle uneasily; "Lizzie Feedour read last time.
+Mamma's is next, and she has read her paper to me. It is just as good
+as it can be. Better than half the essays used to be at college, not
+excepting Mr. Holt's prize thesis on economics. I wish the poor people
+could hear it. She speaks very kindly of their faults even while
+criticising them. You--"
+
+"Don't visit the tenement houses of the Feedour estate, dear, until
+after you read your paper to the club," laughed her husband, "or your
+essay won't take half so well. College theses and cold facts are not
+likely to be more than third cousins; eh, Martin? I'm sure the part on
+cleanliness would be easier for her to manage in discussion before she
+visited the Spillini family, for example."
+
+"Which one is that, Fred?" asked Mr. Foster.
+
+Martin, a droll twinkle in his eye. "The family of eight, with Irish
+mother and Italian father, who live in one room and take boarders?"
+
+There was a little explosive "oh" of protest from Gertrude, while her
+mother laughed delightedly.
+
+"Mr. Martin, you are so perfectly absurd. Why didn't you say that the
+room was only ten by fifteen feet and had but one window!"
+
+"Because I don't think it is quite so big as that, and there is no
+outside window at all," said he, quite gravely. "And their only bath-tub
+for the entire crowd is a small tin basin also used to wash dishes in."
+
+"W-h-a-t!" exclaimed Mrs. Foster, as if she were beginning to suspect
+their guest's sanity, for she recognized that his mood had changed from
+one of banter.
+
+The portière was drawn aside, and other guests announced. As Mrs. Foster
+swept forward to meet them, Gertrude grasped her father's arm and looked
+into his eyes with something very like terror in her own. "Papa," she
+said hastily, in an intense undertone; "Papa, is he in earnest? Do the
+Feedour girls collect rent from such awful poverty as that? Do eight
+human beings eat and sleep--live--in one room anywhere in a Christian
+country? Does--?"
+
+Her father took both of her hands in his own for a moment and looked
+steadily into her face.
+
+"Hundreds of them, darling," he said, gently. "Don't stare at Miss
+Feedour that way. Go speak to her. She is looking toward us, and your
+mother has left her with Martin quite long enough. He is in an ugly
+humor to-night. Go--no, come," he said, slipping her hand in his arm and
+drawing her forward through the long rooms to where the group of guests
+were greeting each other with that easy familiarity which told of
+frequent intercourse and community of interests and social information.
+
+
+
+
+II.
+
+Two hours later Gertrude found herself near a low window seat upon
+which sat John Martin. She could not remember when he had not been her
+father's closest friend, and she had no idea why his moods had changed
+so of late. He was much less free and fatherly with her. She wondered
+now if he despised her because she knew so little of the real woes of
+a real world about her, while she, in common with those of her station,
+sighed so heavily over the needs of a more distant or less repulsive
+human swarm.
+
+"Will you take me to see the Spillini family some day soon, Mr. Martin,"
+she asked, seating herself by his side. "Papa said that you were telling
+the truth--were not joking as I thought at first."
+
+Her eyes were following the graceful movements of Lizzie Feedour, as
+that young lady turned the leaves of a handsome volume that lay on
+the table before her, and a gentleman with whom she was discussing its
+merits and defects.
+
+"I don't believe the call would be a pleasure on either side," said Mr.
+Martin, brusquely, "unless we sent word the day before and had some of
+the family moved out and a chair taken in."
+
+The girl turned her eyes slowly upon him, but she did not speak. The
+color began to climb into his face and dye the very roots of his hair.
+She wondered why. Her own face was rather paler than usual and her eyes
+were very serious.
+
+"You don't want to take me," she said. "I wonder why men always try to
+keep girls from knowing things--from learning of the world as it is--and
+then blame them for their ignorance! You naturally think I am a very
+silly, light girl, but--"
+
+A great panic overtook John Martin's heart. He could hardly keep back
+the tears. He felt the blood rush to his face again, but he did not know
+just what he said.
+
+"I do not--I do not! You are--I--I--should hate to be the one to
+introduce you to such a view of life. I was an old fool to talk as I did
+this evening. I--"
+
+"Oh, that is it!" exclaimed Gertrude, relieved. "You found me ignorant,
+and content because I was ignorant, and you regret that you have struck
+a chord--a serious chord--where only make-believe or merry ones were
+ever struck between us before."
+
+John Martin fidgeted.
+
+"No, it is not that I would like to strike the first serious chord for
+you--in your heart, Gertrude."
+
+He had called her Gertrude for years. Indeed the Miss upon his lips was
+of very recent date, but there was a meaning in the name just now as
+he spoke it that gave the girl a distinct shock. She felt that he was
+covering retreat in one direction by a mendacious advance in another.
+She arose suddenly.
+
+"Lizzie Feedour is looking her best tonight," she said. "She grows
+handsomer every day."
+
+She had moved forward a step, but he caught the hand that hung by her
+side. She faced him with a look of mingled protest and surprise in her
+face; but when her eyes met his, she understood.
+
+"Gertrude, darling!" was all he could say. This time the blood dyed her
+face and a mist blinded her for a moment. She remembered feeling glad
+that her back was turned to everyone but him, and that the window
+drapery hid his face from the others, for the intensity of appeal
+touched with the faintest shimmer of happiness and hope told so plain
+a story that she felt, rather than thought, how absurd it would look to
+anyone else. She did not realize why it seemed less absurd to her.
+She drew her hand away and the color died out of his face. Her own was
+burning. She had turned to leave the room when his disappointed face
+swam before her eyes again. She put out her hand quickly as if bidding
+him good-night and drew him toward the door. He moved beside her as in a
+dream.
+
+"After you take me to see the Spillini family," she said, trying to
+appear natural to any eyes that might be upon her, "we--I--" They had
+reached the portière. She drew it aside and he stepped beyond.
+
+"There is no companionship between two people who look upon life so
+unequally. Those who know all about the world that contains the Spillini
+family and those who know nothing of such a world are very far apart in
+thought and in development There is no mental comradeship. I feel very
+far from my father to-night for the first time--mamma and I. I have
+looked at her all the evening in wonder--and at him. I wonder how they
+have contrived to live so far apart. How could he help sharing his views
+and knowledge of life with her, if he thinks her and wishes her to be
+his real companion and comrade. I could not live that way."
+
+She seemed to have forgotten the newer, nearer question, in
+contemplating the problem that had startled her earlier in the evening.
+John Martin thought it was all a bit of kind-hearted acting to cover
+his retreat. He dropped her hand. A man-servant was holding his coat. He
+thrust his arms in and took his hat.
+
+"Will you take me to see the Spillini family _tomorrow?_" asked a soft
+voice from the portière. A great wave of joy rushed over John Martin. He
+did not know why.
+
+"Yes," he said, in a tone that was so distinctly happy that the
+man-servant stared. The folds of the portière fell together and John
+Martin passed out onto Fifth Avenue, in an ecstasy.
+
+He is willing to share his knowledge of life with me--of life as he sees
+and knows it--she thought, as she lay awake that night. He does not wish
+to live on one plane and have me live on another. That looks like real
+love. Poor mamma! Poor papa! How far apart they are. To him life is a
+real thing. He knows its meaning and what it holds. She only knows a
+shell that is furbished up and polished to attract the eye of children.
+It is as if he were reading a book to her in a language he understood
+and she did not. The sound would be its entire message to her, while he
+gathered in and kept to himself all the meaning of the words--the force
+of the thoughts. How can they bear such isolation. How can they? she
+thought with a new feeling of passionate protest that mingled with her
+dreams.
+
+
+
+
+III.
+
+"Sure an' I'd like to die meself if dyin' wasn't so costly," remarked
+Mrs. Spillini, as she gazed with tear-stained eyes at the little body
+that occupied the only chair in the dismal room. "Do the best we kin,
+buryin' the baby is goin' to cost more than we made all winter out o'
+all three boarders. Havin' the baby cost a dreadful lot altogether, an'
+now it's dyin's a dreadful pull agin."
+
+Gertrude Foster opened her Russian leather purse and Mrs. Spillini's
+eyes brightened shrewdly. There was no need for the hesitancy and choice
+of words that gave the young girl so much care and pain. Familiarity
+with all the mean and gross of life from childhood until one is the
+mother of six living and four dead children, does not leave the finest
+edge of sentiment and pride upon the poverty-cursed victims of fate.
+
+"If you would allow me to leave a mere trifle of money for you to use
+for the baby, I don't--it is only--" began Gertrude; but the ready hand
+had reached out for the money and a quick "Thanky mum; much obliged" had
+ended the transaction.
+
+"I shall not tell mamma _that"_, thought Gertrude, and she did not look
+at John Martin. It was her first glimpse into a grade of life to which
+all things, even birth and death, take on a strictly commercial aspect;
+where not only the edge of sentiment is dulled by dire necessity, but
+where the sentiment itself is buried utterly beneath the incrustations
+of an ignorance that is too dumb and abject to learn, and a poverty that
+is too insistent to recognize its own ignorance and degradation.
+
+"Won't you set down?" inquired Mrs. Spillini, as with a sudden movement
+she slid the small corpse onto the floor under the edge of the table.
+"I'd a' ast you before, but--"
+
+"O, don't!" exclaimed the girl; but before her natural impulse to stoop
+and gather up the small bundle had found action possible, John Martin
+had placed it on the table.
+
+"Oh, Lord; don't!" exclaimed the woman, in sudden dismay. "The
+boarders'd kick if they was to see it _there_. Boarders is
+different from the family. We could ate affen the table afther, but
+boarders--boarders'd kick."
+
+"Could--do you think of anything else we could do for you?" inquired
+Gertrude, faintly, as she held open the door and tried to think she was
+not dizzy and sick from the dreadful, polluted air, and the shock of the
+revelation, with all that it implied, before her.
+
+Four dirty faces, and as many ragged bodies, were too close to her for
+comfort. There was a vile stew cooking on the stove. The air was heavy
+and foul with it Gertrude distinctly felt the greasy moisture on her kid
+gloves as they touched each other.
+
+"No, I don't know's they's anything _more_ you can do," replied
+the passive, hopeless wreck of what it was almost sacrilege to call
+womanhood. "I don't know's they's anything more you could _do_ unless
+you could let the boarders come in now. They ain't got but a little over
+ten minutes to eat in an' dinner's ready," she replied, as she lifted
+the pot of steaming stuff into the middle of the table and laid two tin
+plates, a large knife and a bunch of iron forks and spoons beside it.
+
+"Turn that chair to the wall," she added sharply to one of the children,
+who hastened to obey the command. "They'll _all_ have to stand up to it
+this time. I ain't a goin' to shift that baby round no more till it's
+buried, now that I _kin_ bury it. Take this side of the table, Pete. I
+don't feel like eatin.' You kin have my place 'n the ole man ain't here.
+Let go of that tin cup, you trillin' young one. All the coffee they is,
+is in that. Have a drink, Mike?" she asked, passing the coveted cup to
+the second boarder. Gertrude was half-way down the dark hallway, and
+John Martin held her arm firmly lest she step into some unseen trap or
+broken place in the floor.
+
+When they reached the street door she turned to him with wide eyes.
+
+"Great God," she moaned, "and people go to church and pray and thank
+God--and collect rent from such as they! Men offer premiums to mothers
+and fathers for large families of children--to be brought up like that?
+In a world where that is possible! Oh, I think it is wicked, wicked,
+wicked, to allow it--any of it--all of it! How can you?"
+
+John Martin looked hopeless and helpless.
+
+"I don't," he said, in pathetic self-defense, feeling somehow that the
+blame was personal.
+
+"Oh, I don't mean you!" she exclaimed, almost impatiently. "I mean all
+who know it--who have known and understood it all along. How could men
+allow it? How dared they? And to think of encouraging such people to
+marry--to bring into a life like that such swarms of helpless children.
+Oh, the sin and shame and outrage of it!"
+
+John Martin was dazed that she should look upon it as she did. He was
+surprised that she spoke so openly. He did not fully comprehend the
+power and force of real conviction and feeling overtaken in a sincere
+and fearlessly frank nature by such a knowledge for the first time.
+
+"I should not have brought you here," he said, feebly, as they entered
+the waiting carriage which her mother had insisted she should take if
+she would go "slumming," as she had expressed it.
+
+She turned an indignant face upon him.
+
+"Why?" she demanded.
+
+He tried to say something about a shock to her nerves, and such sights
+and knowledge being not for women.
+
+"I had begun to feel that he respected me--believed in me--wanted, in
+truth and not merely in name, to share life with me," she thought, "but
+he does not: it is all a sham. He wants someone who shall _not_ share
+life with him--not even his mental life."
+
+"You would come here with papa, would you not?" she asked, presently.
+"You would talk over, look at, think of the problems of life with
+him,"--her voice began to tremble.
+
+"Certainly," he said, "but that is different. It--"
+
+"Yes, it is different; quite different. You love papa, and it would be a
+pain to you to keep your mental books locked up from him. You respect
+papa, and you would not be able to live a life of pretense with him.
+You--"
+
+"Gertrude! Oh, darling! I love you. I love you. You know that," he said,
+grasp ing both her hands and covering them with kisses. She snatched
+them away, and covered her face with them to hide the tears which were a
+surprise and shock to herself.
+
+"I should not have taken her there," he thought. "I'm a great fool."
+
+He did not at all comprehend the girl's point of view, and she resented
+his. He could not imagine why, and her twenty years of inexperience in
+handling such a view of life as had suddenly grown up within her, made
+her unable to express quite fully why she did resent his assumption that
+she should not be allowed to use her heart or brain beyond the limits
+set for their exercise by conventional theory. She could not express
+in words why she felt insulted and outraged in her self-respect that he
+should assume that life was and should be led by her, upon a distinctly
+different and narrower plane than his own. She knew that she could not
+accept his explanation, that it was his intense love that wished to
+shield her from knowledge of all that was ugly--of all the deeper and
+sadder meanings of human experience; but she felt unequal to making
+him understand by any words at her command how far from her idea of an
+exalted love such an assumption was.
+
+That he should sincerely believe that as a matter of course much that
+was and should be quite common in his own life should be kept from,
+covered up, blurred into indistinction to her, came to her with a shock
+too sudden and heavy for words. She had built an exalted ideal of
+absolute mental companionship between those who loved. She had always
+thought that one day she should pass through the portals of some vast
+building by the side of a husband to whom all within was new as it would
+be to her. She had fancied that neither spoke; that both read the
+tablets of architecture--and of human legend on every face--so nearly
+alike that by a glance of the eye she could say to him, "I know what you
+are thinking of all this. It stirs such or such a memory. It strikes the
+chord that holds these thoughts or those." But she read as plainly now
+that this man who thought he loved her, whom she had grown to feel she
+might one day love, had no such conception of a union of lives. To him
+marriage would mean a physical possession of a toy more or less
+valuable, more or less to be cherished or to be set under a glass case,
+whenever his real life, his real thoughts, his deeper self were stirred.
+These were to be kept for men--his mentally developed equals. She
+understood full well that if she could have said this to him he would
+have been shocked, would have resented such a contemptuous
+interpretation of what he truly believed to be a wholly respectful love,
+offered upon wholly respectful terms. But to her, it seemed the mere
+tossing down of a filbert to a pretty kitten, that it might amuse him
+for a few moments with its graceful antics. When he tired of the kitten,
+or bethought him of the serious duties of life, he could turn the key
+and count on finding the amusing little creature to play with again next
+day in case he cared to relax himself with a sight of its gambols. She
+resented such a view of the value of her life. She was humiliated and
+indignant. The perfectly apparent lack of comprehension on his part of
+any lapse of respect in attitude toward her, the entire unconsciousness
+of the insult to her whole nature, in his assumption of a divine right
+of individual growth and development to which she had no claim, stung
+her beyond all power of speech. The very fact that he had no
+comprehension of the affront himself, added to it its utterly hopeless
+feature. The love of a man offered on such terms is an insult, she said,
+over and over to herself; but aloud she said nothing.
+
+She had heard, vaguely, through her tumult of feeling, his terms of
+endearment, his appeals to her tenderness and--alas! unfortunately for
+him--his apologies for having taken her to such a place. She became
+distinctly aware of these latter first and it steadied her. They had
+reached Washington Square.
+
+"Yes, that revelation in Mulberry Street was a horrible shock to me,"
+she said, looking at him for the first time since they had entered the
+carriage; "but, do you know, I think there are more shocking things than
+even that done in the name of love every day--things as heartless and
+offensively uncomprehending of what is fine and true in life as that
+wretched woman's conduct with the lifeless form of her baby."
+
+He recognized a hard ring in her voice, but her eyes looked kind and
+gentle.
+
+"How do you mean?" he asked, touching her hand as it lay on her empty
+purse in her lap.
+
+"I don't believe I could ever make you understand what I mean, we are so
+hopelessly far apart," she said, a little sadly. "That an explanation
+is necessary--that is the hopeless part. That that poor woman did not
+comprehend that her conduct and callousness were shocking--_that_ was
+the hopeless part. To make you understand what I mean would be like
+making her understand all the hundreds of awful things that her conduct
+meant to us. If it is not in one's nature to comprehend without words,
+then words are useless."
+
+His vehement protests stirred her sympathy again.
+
+"You say that love brings people near together. Do you know I am
+beginning to think that nothing could be a greater calamity than that?
+Drawn together by a love that rests on a physical basis for those who
+refuse to allow it root in a common sympathy and a community of thought
+it must fail sooner or later. A humbled acceptance of the crumbs of
+her husband's life, or a resentful endurance of it, may result from
+the accursed faithfulness or the pitiful dependence of wives, but
+surely--surely no greater calamity could befall her and no worse fate
+lie in wait for him."
+
+Her lover stared at her, pained and puzzled. When they reached her door
+he grasped her hand.
+
+"I thought you loved me last night, and I went away in an ecstasy of
+hope. Today--"
+
+"Perhaps I do love you," she said; "but I do not respect you, because
+you do not respect me." He made a quick sound of dissent, but she
+checked him. "You do not respect womanhood; you only patronize
+women--you only patronize me. I could not give you a right to do that
+for life. Good-bye. Don't come in this time. Wait. Let us both think."
+
+"Let us both think," he repeated, as he started down the street.
+"Think! Think what? I had no idea that Gertrude would be so utterly
+unreasonable. It is a girl's whim. She'll get over it, but it is
+deucedly uncomfortable while it lasts."
+
+"Mamma," said Gertrude, when she reached her mother's pretty room on the
+third floor. "Mamma, do you suppose if a girl really and truly loved a
+man that she would stop to think whether he had a high or a low estimate
+of womanhood?"
+
+The girl's mother looked up startled. She was quite familiar with what
+she had always termed the "superhumanly aged remarks" of her daughter,
+but the new turn they had taken surprised her.
+
+"I don't believe she would, Gertrude. Why? Are you imagining yourself
+in love with some man who is not chivalrous toward women?" Mrs. Foster
+smiled at the mere idea of her daughter caring much for any man. She
+thought she had observed her too closely to make a mistake in the
+matter.
+
+Gertrude evaded the first question.
+
+"I once heard a very brilliant man say--what I did not then
+understand--that chivalry was always the prelude to imposition. I
+believe I don't care very especially for chivalry. Fair play is better,
+don't you think so?" She did not pause for a reply, but began taking off
+her long gloves.
+
+"Which would you like best from papa, flattery or square-toed, honest
+truth?"
+
+Her mother laughed.
+
+"Gertrude, you are perfectly ridiculous. The institution of marriage, as
+now established, wouldn't hang together ten minutes if your square-toed,
+honest truth, as you call it, were to be tried between husbands and
+wives. Most wives are frightened nearly to death for fear they will
+become acquainted with the truth some day. They don't want it. They were
+not--built for it." Gertrude began to move about the room impatiently.
+Her mother smiled at her and went on: "Don't you look at it that way?
+No? Well, you are young yet. Wait until you've been married three
+years--"
+
+The girl turned upon her with an indignant face. Then suddenly she threw
+her arms about her mother's neck.
+
+"Poor mamma, poor mamma," she said. "Didn't you find out for three years
+_after?_ How did you bear it? I should have committed suicide. I--"
+
+"Oh, no you wouldn't!" said her mother, with a bitter little inflection.
+"They all talk that way. Girls all feel so, if they know enough to feel
+at all--to think at all. They rage and wear out their nerves--as you are
+doing now, heaven knows why--and the beloved husband calls a doctor
+and buys sweets and travels with the precious invalid, and never once
+suspects that he is at the bottom of the whole trouble. It never dawns
+upon him that what she is dying for is a real and loyal companionship,
+such as she had fondly dreamed of, and not at all for sea air. It
+doesn't enter his mind that she feels humiliated because she knows that
+a great part of his life is a sealed book to her, and that he wishes to
+keep it so."
+
+She paused, and her daughter stroked her cheek. This was indeed a
+revelation to the girl. She had been wholly deceived by her mother's gay
+manner all these years. She was taking herself sharply to task now.
+
+"But by and by when she succeeds in killing all her self-respect; when
+she makes up her mind that the case is hopeless, and that she must
+expect absolutely no frankness in life beyond the limits of conventional
+usage prescribed for purblind babies; after she arrives at the point
+where she discovers that her happiness is a pretty fiction built on air
+foundation--well, daughter, after that she--she strives to murder all
+that is in her beyond and above the petty simpleton she passes for--and
+she succeeds fairly well, doesn't she?"
+
+There was a cynical smile on her lips, and she made an elaborate bow to
+her daughter.
+
+"Oh, mamma, I beg your pardon!" exclaimed the girl, almost frightened.
+"I truly beg your pardon! If--you--I--"
+
+Her mother looked steadily out of the window. Then she said, slowly,
+"How did you come to find all this out _before_ you were married, child?
+Have I not done a mother's duty by you in keeping you in ignorance, so
+far as I could, of all the struggles and facts of life--of--"
+
+The bitter tone was in her voice again. Gertrude was hurt by it, it was
+so full of self-reproach mingled with self-contempt. She slipped her arm
+about her mother's waist.
+
+"Don't, mamma," she said. "Don't blame yourself like that. I'm sure you
+have always done the best possible--the--"
+
+Her mother laughed, but the note was not pleasant.
+
+"Yes, I always did the lady-like thing,--nothing. I floated with the
+tide. Take my advice, daughter,--float. If you don't, you'll only
+tire yourself trying to swim against a tide that is too strong for you
+and--and nothing will come of it. Nothing at all." The girl began to
+protest with the self-confidence of youth, but her mother went on. She
+had taken the bit in her teeth to-day and meant to run the whole race.
+
+"Do you suppose I did not know about the Spillini family? About the
+thousands of Spillini families? Do you suppose I did not know that the
+rent of ten such families--their whole earnings for a year--would be
+spent on--on a pretty inlaid prayer-book like this?" She tapped the
+jeweled cross and turned it over on her lap. The girl's eyes were wide
+and almost fear-filled as she studied her handsome care-free mother in
+her new mood.
+
+"Did you really suppose I did not know that this gem on the top of the
+cross is dyed with the life-blood of some poor wretch, and that this one
+represents the price of the honor of a starving girl?" She shivered, and
+the girl drew back. "Did you fancy me as ignorant and as--happy--as
+I have talked? Don't you know that it is the sole duty of a well-bred
+woman to be ignorant--and happy? Otherwise she is morbid!" She
+pronounced the word affectedly, and then laughed a bitter little laugh.
+
+"Don't, mamma," said the girl, again. "I quite understand now, quite--"
+She laid her head on her mother's bosom and was silent. Presently she
+felt a tear drop on her hair. She put her hand up to her mother's cheek
+and stroked it.
+
+"The game went against you, didn't it, mamma?" she said softly. "And you
+were not to blame." She felt a little shiver run over her mother's frame
+and a sob crushed back bravely that hurt her like a knife. Presently two
+hands lifted the girl's face.
+
+"You don't despise me, daughter? In my position the price of a woman's
+peace is the price of her own self-respect. I did not lose the game. I
+gave it up!"
+
+Gertrude kissed her on eyes and lips. "Poor mamma, poor mamma," she said
+softly, "I wonder if I shall do the same!" For the first time since she
+entered the room, the daughter appeared to appeal for, rather than to
+offer, sympathy and strength. Her mother was quick to respond.
+
+"If you never learn to love anyone very much, daughter, you may hope
+to keep your self-respect. If you do you will sell it all--for his.
+And--and--"
+
+"Lose both at last?" asked the girl, hoarsely. Katherine Foster closed
+her eyes for a moment to shut out her daughter's face.
+
+"Will you ever have had his?" she asked, with her eyes still closed.
+"Do men ever truly respect their dupes or their inferiors? Do you truly
+respect anyone to whom you are willing to deny truth, honor, dignity?
+Is it respect, or only a tender, pitying love we offer an intellectual
+cripple--one whose mental life we know to be, and desire to keep,
+distinctly below our own? Do--" She opened her eyes and they rested on
+an onyx clock. She laughed. "Come, daughter," she said, "it is time to
+dress for the Historical Club's annual dinner. You know I am one of the
+guests of honor to-day. They honor me so truly that I am not permitted
+to join the club or be ranked as a useful member at all. My work they
+accept--flatter me by praising in a lofty way; but I can have no status
+with them as an historian--I am a woman!"
+
+Gertrude sprang to her feet. Her eyes flashed fire.
+
+"Don't go! I wouldn't allow them to--" The door opened softly. Mr.
+Foster's face appeared.
+
+"Why, dearie, aren't you ready for the Historical Club? I wouldn't have
+you late for anything. You know I, as the vice-president, am to respond
+to the toast on, 'Woman: the highest creation, and God's dearest gift to
+mankind.' It wouldn't look well if you were not there."
+
+"No, dear," she said, without glancing at Gertrude. "It would not look
+well. I'll be ready in a minute. Will you help me, Gertrude?"
+
+"Yes," said the girl, and her deft fingers flew at the task. When the
+door closed behind her mother and the carriage rolled away, she threw
+herself face down on the bed and ground her teeth. "Shall I float, or
+try to swim up stream?" she said, to herself. "Will either one pay for
+what it will cost? Shall--"
+
+"Miss Gertrude, dinner is served," said the maid; and she went to the
+table alone.
+
+"To think that a visit to the Spillini family should have led to all
+this," she thought, and felt that life, as it had been, was over for
+her.
+
+Aloud she said:--
+
+"James, the berries, please, and then you may go."
+
+And James told Susan that in his opinion the man that got Miss Gertrude
+was going to get the sweetest, simplest, yieldingest girl he ever saw
+except one, and Susan vowed she could not guess who that one was.
+
+But apparently James did not wholly believe her, for he essayed to
+sportively poke her under the chin with an index finger that very
+evidently had seen better days prior to having come into violent contact
+with a base-ball, which, having a mind and a curve of its own, had
+incidentally imparted an eccentric crook to the unfortunate member.
+
+"Don't you dast t'touch me with that old pot-hook, er I'll scream,"
+exclaimed Susan, dodging the caress. "I don't see no sense in a feller
+gettin' hisself all broke up that a way," and Susan, from the opposite
+side of the butler's table, glanced admiringly at her own shapely hand,
+albeit the wrist might have impressed fastidious taste as of too robust
+proportions, and the fingers have suggested less of flexibility than is
+desirable.
+
+But to James the hand was perfect, and Susan, feeling her power, did not
+scruple to use it with brutal directness. She had that shivering dislike
+for deformity which, is possessed by the physically perfect, and she
+took it as a private grievance that James should have taken the liberty
+to break one of his fingers without her knowledge and consent. Until he
+had met her, James had carried his distorted member as a badge of honor.
+No warrior had worn more proudly his battle scars. For, to James, to be
+a catcher in a base-ball club was honor enough for one man, and he had
+never dreamed of a loftier ambition. He had grown to keep that mutilated
+finger ever to the fore as a retired general might carry an empty
+sleeve. It gave distinction and told of brave and lofty achievement, so
+James thought.
+
+Susan had modified his pride in the dislocated digit, but he had not yet
+learned to keep it always in the background. It had several times before
+interfered with his love-making, and James was humble.
+
+"Oh, now, Susie, don't you be so hard on that there old base-ball
+finger! I didn't know it was a-going to touch your lovely dimple,"
+and he held the offending member behind his back, as he slowly circled
+around the table towards the haughty Susan. "By gum! I b'lieve I left a
+mark on your chin. Lemme see." She thought she understood the ruse, but
+when he kissed her she pretended deep indignation and flounced out of
+the room, but the look on her face caused James to drop his left eyelid
+over a twinkling orb and shake his sides with satisfaction as he removed
+the dishes after Miss Gertrude had withdrawn from the dining-room.
+
+
+
+
+IV.
+
+The visit to the Spillini family had, indeed, led to strange
+complications and far-reaching results. No one who had known young
+Seldon Avery and his social life would ever have suspected him, or
+any member of his set, of a desire to take part in what, by their club
+friends or favorite reviews, was usually alluded to as the "dirty pool
+of politics." For the past decade political advancement, at least in New
+York, had grown to be looked upon by many as a mere matter of purchase
+and sale, and as quite beneath the dignity of the more refined and
+cultured men. It had been heralded as a vast joke, therefore, when young
+Selden Avery, the representative of one of the most cultured families
+and the honored son of an honored ancestry, had suddenly announced
+himself as a candidate for the Assembly. His club friends guyed him
+unmercifully. "We never did believe that you were half as good as you
+pretended to be, Avery," said one of them, the first time he appeared
+at the club after his nomination, "but I don't believe a man of us ever
+suspected you of the depths of depravity that this implies. What ever
+did put such a ridiculous idea into such a level and self-respecting
+head? Out with it!"
+
+Banter of this nature met him on every hand. He realized more fully than
+ever how changed the point of view had grown to be from the historical
+days of Washington or even of Lincoln. He recalled the time when in
+his own boyhood his honored father had served in the Legislature of his
+native state, and had not felt it other than a crowning distinction. Nor
+had it been so looked upon then by his associates.
+
+Nevertheless the constant jokes and gibes, which held something of a
+real sting, had become so frequent that, young Avery felt like resenting
+his friends' humorous thrusts.
+
+"I can't see that I need be ashamed to follow in the footsteps of my
+father," he said, a little hotly. "Some of the noblest of men--those
+upon whom the history of this country depends for lustre--held seats in
+the Assembly, and helped shape the laws of their states. I don't see why
+I need apologize for a desire to do the same."
+
+"It used to be an association of gentlemen up at the state capital, my
+boy. Today it is--Lord! you know what it is, I guess. But if you don't,
+just peruse this sacred volume," laughed his friend, sarcastically,
+producing a small pamphlet.
+
+"Looks to me as if you'd be rather out of your element with your
+colleagues. 'M-m-m! Yes, here is the list. Hunted this up after I heard
+you were going to stand for your district."
+
+The English form of expression was no affectation, for the speaker was
+far more familiar with political nomenclature abroad than at home. He
+would have felt it an honor to a man to be called upon to "stand" for
+his constituency in London, but to "run" for it in New York was far less
+dignified. Standing gave an idea of repose; running was vulgar. Then,
+too, the State Legislature did not bear the proportionate relationship
+to Congress that the Commons did to Parliament, and it was always in
+connection with that latter body that he had associated the term.
+
+"Let me see. One, two, three, four, 'teen 'steen--yes, I thought I
+was right! Just exactly nineteen of your nearest colleagues are saloon
+keepers. One used to keep that disorderly house on Prince Street, four
+are butchers, one was returned because he had won fame as a base-ballist
+and--but why go further? Here, Martin, I'm trying to convince Avery that
+it will be a trifle trying on his nerves to hobnob with the new set he's
+making for. Don't you think it is rather an anti-climax from the Union
+to the lower house at Albany? Ye gods!" and he laughed, half in scorn
+and half in real amusement.
+
+John Martin had extended his hand for the small pamphlet of statistics.
+He ran his eye over the list, and then turned an amused face upon Avery.
+
+"Think you'll like it?" he asked, dryly. "Or are you taking it as my
+French friend here says his countrymen take heaven?"
+
+"How's that?" queried Avery, smiling. "In broken doses--or not at all?"
+
+The French gentleman stood with that poise which belongs to the
+successful man. He glanced from one to the other and spread his hands to
+either side.
+
+"All Frenchmen desire to go to ze heaven, zhentlemen. Why? Ah, zere air
+two at-traczions which to effrey French zhentle-man air irresisteble.
+Ze angels--zey air women--and I suppose zat ze God weal also be an
+attraction. Ees eet not so?"
+
+Every one in the group laughed and he went on gravely on.
+
+"I zink zat eet ees true--ees eet not?--zat loafly woman will always be
+vara much ob-searved even in ze heaven eef we zhentlemen are zere. Eef?"
+He cast up the comers of his eyes, and made another elaborate movement
+of his hands.
+
+The others all laughed again.
+
+"Yes, zhentlemen, ze true Frenchman cares for two zings: a new
+sensation--someings zey haf not before experienced,--and zat ees God;
+and for zat which zey haf obsearved, but of which zey can naavear
+obsearve enough--loafly woman!"
+
+The explosion of laughter that greeted this sally brought about them a
+number of other gentlemen, and the talk drifted into different channels.
+Presently young Avery glanced at his watch and started, with rather
+a sore heart toward the door. He remembered that he had promised the
+managers of his campaign that he would be seen that evening at a certain
+open-air garden frequented by the humbler portion of his constituency.
+He concluded to go alone the first time that he might the better observe
+without attracting too much attention. This plan was thought wise to
+enable him to meet the exigencies of the coming campaign when he should
+be called upon to speak to this element of this supporters.
+
+Once outside the club house, he took a card from his pocket and glanced
+at the directions he had jotted upon it.
+
+"I'll walk across to the elevated," he thought, "and make my connection
+for Grady's place that way. It will save time and look more democratic."
+
+
+
+
+V.
+
+The infinite pathos of life was never better illustrated, perhaps, than
+in the merrymaking that night at Grady's Pavilion. The easy camaradarie
+between conscious and unconscious vice; the so-evident struggle the
+young girls had made to be beautiful and stylish, and the ghastly result
+of their cheap and incongruous finery; their ignorant acceptance of
+leers that meant to them honest admiration or affection, and to others
+meant far different things; their jolly, thoughtless, eager effort to
+get something joyful out of their narrow lives; the brilliant tints
+in which they saw the future, and the ghastly light in which it stood
+revealed to older and more experienced eyes, would have combined to
+depress a heart less tender and a vision less clear than could have been
+attributed to Selden Avery. Not that Grady's Pavilion was a bad place.
+
+Many of the girls present would not have been there had it been known as
+anything short of quite respectable; but it was a free and easy place,
+where vice meets ignorance without having first made an appointment,
+where opportunity shakes the ungloved hand of youth and leaves a stain
+upon the tender palm too deep and dark for future tears to wash away.
+
+"I wonder if I am growing morbid," mused Avery, as he sighed for the
+third time while looking at the face of a girl not over eighteen
+years old, but already marked by lines that told of a vaguely dawning
+comprehension of what the future held for her. Her round-eyed companion,
+a girl with a childish mind and face, sat beside her, but all the world
+was bright to her. Life held a prince, a fortune and a career which
+would be hers one day. She had only to wait, look pretty, and be ready
+when the apple of fortune fell. Her part was to hold out a pretty apron
+to break its descent.
+
+"Oh, the infinite pathos of youth!" muttered Avery, feeling himself very
+old with his thirty years of wider experience as his eyes turned from
+one girl to the other. "It is hard to tell which is the sadder sight;
+the disillusioned one or the one who will be even more roughly awakened
+to-morrow."
+
+His heart ached whenever he studied the face of a young girl. "There is
+nothing so sad in all the wretched world," he sometimes said, "as the
+birth of a girl in this grade of life. I am not sure that the nations
+we look upon as barbarous because they strangle the little things before
+they are able to think--I am not at all sure that they are not more
+civilized than we after all. We only maim them with ignorance and utter
+dependence, and then turn them out into a life where either of these
+alone is an incalculable curse, and the combination is as fatal as fire
+in a field of ripened grain."
+
+The younger girl was looking at him. Her wide expectant eyes rested on
+his face with a frankness and interest that touched his mood anew.
+
+"Poor little thing," he said, half aloud; "if I were to see her bound
+hand and foot and cast into a den of wolves, I might hope to rescue her;
+but from this, for such as she there is absolutely no escape. How dare
+people bring into the world those who must suffer?"
+
+"Huh?" said a voice beside him. He had spoken in a semi-audible tone,
+and his neighbor had responded after his habitual fashion, to what he
+looked upon as an overture to conversation.
+
+"I did not intend to speak aloud," said Avery, turning to glance at
+the man beside him; "but I was just wondering how people dared to have
+children--girls particularly."
+
+The man beside him turned his full face upon him and examined him
+critically from head to foot. Then he laughed. It was the first time he
+had ever heard it hinted that it was not a wholly commendable thing to
+bring as many children into the world as nature would permit. His first
+thought had been that Avery was insane, but after looking at him he
+decided that he was only a grim joker.
+
+"I reckon they don't spend no great deal of time prayin' over the
+subject," he said, laughing again. Then he crossed his legs and added,
+"an' I don't suppose they get any telegrams tellin' them they're goin'
+to _be_ girls, neither. If they did, a good many men would lick the boy
+that brought the despatch, for God knows most of us would a dam sight
+ruther have boys."
+
+The laugh had died out of his voice, and there was a ring of
+disappointment and aggrieved trouble in it. Selden Avery shifted his
+position.
+
+"I was not looking at it from the point of view of the parents of
+unwelcome girls," he said, presently, "but from the outlook of the girls
+of unwelcome parents. The reckoning from that side looks to me a good
+deal longer than the other." His voice was pleasant, but his eyes looked
+perplexed and determined. His neighbor began to readjust his opinion
+of Avery's sanity, and moved his chair a little farther away before he
+spoke.
+
+"Got any children of your own?" he inquired, succinctly. Avery shook
+his head. The man drew down the comers of his mouth in a contemptuous
+grimace. "I thought not. If you had, you'd take it a dam sight easier.
+Children are an ungrateful lot. They're never satisfied--or next to
+never. They think you're made for their comfort instead of their bein'
+for yours. I've got nine, and I know what I'm talkin' about. If you've
+got any sympathy to throw away don't waste it on children. Parents, in
+these days of degenerate youngsters, are passin' around the hat for
+sympathy. In my day it was just the other way. If one of the young ones
+went wrong, people pitied the father and blamed the child. Now-a-days
+they blame the father and weep over the young one that makes the
+mischief. It makes me mad."
+
+He shut his teeth with a suddenness that suggested a snap, and flashed a
+defiant look about the room.
+
+Avery glanced at his heavy, stubborn face, and decided not to reply. He
+was in no mood for controversy. And what good could it do, he said to
+himself, to argue with a mere lump of selfish egotism?
+
+"That is an unusually pretty girl over by the piano," he said, in a
+tone of mild indifference which he hoped would serve as a period to the
+conversation.
+
+"She's Tom Berton's girl," was the quick reply. "Berton's up to Albany
+most o' the time, with me. I represent our district. She's a nice little
+thing. She'll do anything you ask her to. I never see her equal for
+that. It's easier for her to do your way than it is to do her own. She
+likes to; so everybody likes her. I wish I had one like her; but my
+girls are as stubborn as mules. They won't drive, and they won't lead,
+and they'd ruther kick than eat. I don't know where they got it. Their
+mother wasn't half so bad that way, and the Lord knows it ain't in _my_
+family. The girl she's with is one o' mine. She looks like she could eat
+tenpenny nails. She might be just as pretty an' just as much liked as
+Ettie Berton, but she ain't. She's always growlin' about somethin'. I'll
+bet a dollar she'll growl about this when we get home. Ettie will think
+it was splendid. She'd have a good time at a funeral; but that girl of
+mine 'll get me to spend a dollar to come here and then she'll go home
+dissatisfied. It won't be up to what she expected.
+
+"Things never are. She's always lookin' to find things some other way.
+Now, what would you do with a girl like that?" he asked suddenly.
+Then without waiting for a reply, he added, "I give her a good tongue
+lashin', an' as she always knows it's comin', she's got so she don't
+kick _quite_ so much as she used to, but she just sets an' looks sullen
+like that. It makes me so mad I could--"
+
+He did not finish his remark, but got up and strolled away without the
+formality of an adieu.
+
+Avery watched his possible future colleague until he was lost in the
+crowd, and then he walked deliberately over to where the two girls
+stood.
+
+"I have been talking with your father," he said, smiling and bowing to
+the older girl, "and although he did not say that I might come and talk
+to you, he told me who you were, and I think he would not object."
+
+"Oh, no; he wouldn't object," said the younger girl, eagerly. "Would he,
+Fan? Everybody talks here. He told me so before we came. It's the first
+time we've been; but he's been before. I think it's splendid, don't
+you?"
+
+The older girl had not spoken. She was looking at Selden Avery with half
+suppressed interest and embryonic suspicion. She still knew too little
+of life to have formed even a clearly defined doubt as to him or his
+intentions in speaking to them. She was less happy than she had expected
+to be when she dressed to come with her ever-dawning hope for a real
+pleasure. She thought there must be something wrong with her because
+things never seemed to come up to her expectations. She supposed this
+must be "society," and that when she got used to it, she would enjoy it
+more. But somehow she had wanted to resent it the first time a man spoke
+to her, and then, afterward, she was glad she did not, for he had danced
+with Ettie twice, and Ettie had said it was a lovely dance. She had made
+up her mind to accept the next offer she had, but when it came, the
+eyes of the man were so beady-black, and the odor of bay rum radiated
+so insistently from him that she declined. She hated bay rum because
+the worst scolding her father ever gave her was when she had emptied
+his cherished bottle upon her own head. The odor always brought back
+the heart-ache and resentment of that day, and so she did not think she
+cared to dance just then.
+
+Selden Avery looked at Ettie. He did not want to tell her what he did
+think and he had not the heart to dampen her ardor, so he simply smiled,
+and said:
+
+"It is my first visit here, too; and I don't know a soul. I noticed you
+two young ladies a while ago, and spoke of you to the gentleman next
+to me and it chanced to be your father"--he turned to the older girl
+again--"so that was what gave me courage to come over here. If I had
+thought of it before he left me, I'd have asked him to introduce me, but
+I'm rather slow to think. My name is Selden Avery."
+
+"Did father tell you mine?" she asked, looking at him steadily, with
+eyes that held floating ends of thoughts that were never formed in full.
+
+"No, he didn't," replied Avery, laughing a little. "He told me yours,
+though," turning to the merry child at his side. "Ettie Berton, Tom
+Berton's daughter."
+
+Ettie laughed, and clapped her hands together twice.
+
+"Got it right the first time! But what did he give me away for and not
+her? She is Francis King. That is, her father's name's King, but she is
+so awfully particular about things and so hard to suit she ought to be
+named Queen, I tell her, so I call her Queen Fan mostly." There was a
+little laugh all around, and Avery said:--
+
+"Very good, very good, indeed;" but Francis looked uncomfortable and so
+he changed the subject. Presently she looked at him and asked:--
+
+"Do you think things are ever like they are in books? Do you think this
+is? She waved her hand toward the music and the lights. In the books I
+have read--and the story papers--it all seems nicer than this and--and
+different. It is because I say that, that they all make fun of me and
+call me Queen Fan, and father says--" she paused, and a cold light
+gathered in her eyes. "He don't like it, so I don't say it much, now. He
+says it's all put on; but it ain't Everything does seem to turn out so
+different from what you expected--from the way you read about. I've not
+felt like I thought _maybe_ I should to-night because--because--" she
+stopped again.
+
+"Because why?" asked Avery, laughing a little. "Because I'm not a bit
+like the usual story-book prince you ought to have met and--?"
+
+She smiled, and Ettie made a droll little grimace.
+
+"No, it wasn't that at all. I've been thinking most all evening that it
+wasn't worth--that--"
+
+"Oh, she's worried," put in Ettie, "because she got her father to spend
+a dollar to bring her. She's afraid he'll throw it up to her afterward,
+and she thinks it won't pay for that, so it spoils the whole thing
+before he does it--just being afraid he will. But I tell her he won't,
+this time. I--" Francis' eyes had filled with tears of mortification,
+and Avery pretended not to have heard. He affected a deep interest in
+the music.
+
+"Do you know what it is they are playing now?" he asked, with his eyes
+fixed upon the musicians. "I thought at first that it was going to
+be--No, it is--Ton my word I can't recall it, and I ought to know what
+it is, too. The first time I ever heard it, I remember--"
+
+He turned toward where Francis had stood, but she was gone. "Why, what
+has become of Miss King?" he asked of the other girl. Ettie looked all
+about, laughed and wondered and chattered as gaily as a bird.
+
+"I expect she's gone home. She's the queerest you ever saw. I guess she
+didn't want me to say that about her pa. But it'll make him madder than
+anything if she has gone that way. He won't like it at all--an' I can't
+blame him. What's the use to be so different from other folks?" she
+inquired, sagely, and then she added, laughing: "I don't know as she is
+so different, either. We all hate things, but we pretend we don't. Don't
+you think it's better to pretend to like things, whether you do or not?"
+
+"No," replied Avery, beginning to look with surprise upon this small
+philosopher who had no conception of the worldly wisdom of her own
+philosophy.
+
+"I do," she said, laughing again. "It goes down better. Everybody
+likes you better. I've found that out already, and so I pretend to like
+everything. Of course I do like some of 'em, and some I don't, but it's
+just as easy to say you like 'em all." She laughed again, and kept time
+with her toe on the floor.
+
+"Just what don't you like?" asked Avery, smiling. "Won't you tell me,
+truly? I won't tell any one, and I'd like to be sure of one thing you
+object to--on principle."
+
+"Well, tob--Do you smoke?" she asked.
+
+He shook his head, and pursed up his lips negatively.
+
+"I thought not," she said, gaily. "You look like you didn't. Well, I
+hate--hate--hate--hate smoke. When I go on a ferry-boat, and the air is
+so nice and cool and different from at home, and seems so clean, I just
+love it, and then--"
+
+"Some one sits near you and smokes," put in Avery, consolingly.
+
+"Yes, they do; and I just most pray that he'll fall over and get
+drownded--but he never does; and if he asks me if I object to smoke,
+I say, 'Oh! not at all!' and then he thinks I'm such a nice, sensible
+girl. Fan tells 'em right out that she don't like it. It makes her
+deadly sick, and the boys all hate her for it. Her father says it's
+da---- I was going to say his cuss word, but I guess I won't. Anyhow,
+he says it's all nonsense and put on. I guess I better go. There is
+her father looking for us. Poor Fan'll catch it when we get home!
+Good-night. I've had a lovely time, haven't you?" She waved her hand.
+Then she retraced the step she had taken. "Don't tell that I don't like
+tobacco," she said, and started away laughing. He followed her a few
+steps.
+
+"How is any fellow to know what you really do like?" he asked, smiling,
+"if you do that way?"
+
+"Fan says nobody wants to know," she said, slyly. "She says they want to
+know that I like what they want me to like, and think what they think I
+think." She laughed again. "And of course I do," she added, and bowed in
+mock submission. "Now, Fan don't. That's where she misses it; and if she
+don't--reform," she said, lowering her voice, as she neared that young
+lady's father, "she is going to see trouble that is trouble. I'll bet a
+cent on it. Don't you?" she asked, as she bestowed a bright smile upon
+Mr. King.
+
+"Yes," said Avery, and lifting his hat, turned on his heel and was lost
+in the crowd.
+
+"Where's Fan?" inquired that young lady's father in a tone which
+indicated that, as a matter of course, she was up to some devilment
+again.
+
+"She got a headache and went home quite a while ago," said that young
+lady's loyal little friend. "She enjoyed it quite a lot till she did
+get a headache." As they neared the street where both lived, Ettie said:
+"That man talked to her, and I think she liked him."
+
+"Humph!" said Mr. King. "I wouldn't be surprised. She'd be likely to
+take to a lunatic. I thought he was about the damnedest fool I ever saw;
+didn't you?"
+
+"Yes," said Ettie, laughing, "and I liked him for it."
+
+Mr. King burst into a roar of laughter. "Of course you did! You'd like
+the devil. You're that easy to please. I wish to the Lord Fan was," and
+with a hearty "goodnight," he left her at her father's door, and crossed
+the street.
+
+Once outside the garden, Avery drew from his pocket the little pamphlet
+which his club friend had given him, and ran his finger down the list.
+
+"King, member the--ah, ha! one end of his ward joins mine! 'M-m-m; yes,
+I see. He is one of the butchers. I suspected as much. Let me see; yes,
+he votes my ticket, too. If I'm elected we'll be comrades-in-arms, so to
+speak I suppose I ought to have told him who I was; but if I'm elected
+he'll find out soon enough, and if I'm beaten--well, I can't say that
+I'm anxious to extend the acquaintance." He replaced the book in his
+pocket as the guard called out, 'Thirty-Fourth Street! 'strain for
+Arlem!' and left the train, musing as he strolled along. "Yes, Gertrude
+was quite right--quite. We fortunate ones have no right to allow all
+this sort of thing to go on. We have no right to leave it entirely to
+such men as that to make the laws. I don't care if the fellows up at the
+club do guy me. Gertrude--" He drew from his breast-pocket a little
+note, and read it for the tenth time.
+
+"I am so gratified to hear that you have accepted the nomination," it
+said. "You have the time, and mental and moral equipment to give to
+the work Were I a man, I should not sleep o' nights until some way
+was devised to prevent all the terrible poverty and ignorance and
+brutishness we were talking about the other day. I went to see that
+Spillini family again. I was afraid to go alone, so I took with me two
+girls who are in a sewing class, which is, just now a fad at our Church
+Guild. I thought their experience with poverty would enable them to
+think of a way to get at this case; but it did not. They appeared to
+think it was all right It seems to me that ignorance and poverty leave
+no room for thought, or even for much feeling. It hurt me like a knife
+to have those girls laugh over it after we came out; at least, one of
+them laughed, and the other seemed scornful, It is not fair to expect
+more of them, I know, for we expect so little of ourselves. It is
+thinking of all this that makes me write to tell you how glad I am that
+you are to represent your district in Albany. Such men are needed, for
+I know you will work for the poor with the skill of a trained intellect
+and a sympathetic heart. I am so glad. Sincerely your friend, Gertrude
+Foster."
+
+Mr. Avery replaced the note in his pocket, and smiled contentedly. "I
+don't care a great deal what the fellows at the club say," he repeated.
+"I'm satisfied, if Gertrude--" He had spoken the last few words almost
+audibly, and the name startled him. He realized for the first time that
+he had fallen into the habit of thinking of her as Gertrude, and
+it suddenly flashed upon him that Miss Foster might be a good deal
+surprised by that fact if she knew it. He fell to wondering if she would
+also be annoyed. There was a tinge of anxiety in the speculation. Then
+it occurred to him that the sewing class of the Guild might give an
+outlet and a chance for a bit of pleasure to that strange girl he had
+seen at Grady's Pavilion, and he made a little memorandum, and decided
+to call upon Gertrude and suggest it to her. He fell asleep that night
+and dreamed of Gertrude Foster, holding out a helping hand to a strange,
+tall girl, with dissatisfied eyes, and that Ettie Berton was laughing
+gaily and making everybody comfortable, by asserting that she liked
+everything exactly as she found it.
+
+
+
+
+VI
+
+The next evening Avery called upon Gertrude to thank her for her letter,
+and, incidentally, to tell her of the experience at Grady's Pavilion,
+and bespeak the good office of the Guild for those two human pawns, who
+had, somehow, weighed upon his heart.
+
+Avery was not a Churchman himself, but he felt very sure that any Guild
+which would throw Gertrude Foster's influence about less fortunate
+girls, would be good, so he gave very little thought to the phase of it
+which was not wholly related to the personality of the young woman in
+whose eyes he had grown to feel he must appear well and worthy, if he
+retained his self-respect. This bar of judgment had come, by unconscious
+degrees, to be the one before which he tried his own cases for and
+against himself.
+
+"Would Gertrude like it if she should know? Would I dislike to have her
+know that I did this or felt that?" was now so constantly a part of his
+mental processes, that he had become quite familiar with her verdicts,
+which were most often passed--from his point of view, and in his own
+mind--without the knowledge of the girl herself.
+
+He had never talked of love to her, except in the general and impersonal
+fashion of young creatures who are wont to eagerly discuss the profound
+perplexities of life without having come face to face with one of them.
+One day they had talked of love in a cottage. The conversation had been
+started by the discussion of a new novel they had just read, and Avery
+told her of a strange fellow whom he knew, who had married against the
+wishes of his father, and had been disinherited.
+
+"He lost his grip, somehow," said Avery, "and went from one disaster
+into another. First he lost his place, and the little salary they had to
+live on was stopped. It was no fault of his. It had been in due course
+of a business change in the firm he worked for. He got another, but not
+so good a situation, but the little debts that had run up while he was
+idle were a constant drag on him. He never seemed able to catch up. Then
+his wife's health failed. She needed a change of climate, rare and
+delicate food, a quiet mind relieved of anxiety, but he could not give
+her these. His own nerves gave way under the strain, and at last
+sickness overtook him, and he had to appeal to me for a loan."
+
+It was the letter which his friend had written when in that desperate
+frame of mind, which Avery read to Gertrude the day they had discussed
+the novel together. It was a strange, desperate letter, and it had
+greatly stirred Gertrude. One passage in it had rather shocked her. It
+was this: "When a fellow is young, and knows little enough of life to
+accept the fictions of fiction as guides, he talks or thinks about it
+as 'love in a cottage.' After he has tried it a while, and suffered in
+heart and soul _because_ of his love of those whom he must see day
+after day handicapped in mind and wrecked in body for the need of larger
+means, he begins to speak of it mournfully as 'poverty with love' But
+when that awful day comes, when sickness or misfortune develops before
+his helpless gaze all the horrors of dependence and agony of mind that
+the future outlook shows him, then it is that the fitting description
+comes, and he feels like painting above the door he dreads to
+enter--'hell at home.' Without the love there would be no home; without
+the poverty no hell. Neither lightens the burdens of the other. Each
+multiplies all that is terrible in both."
+
+Gertrude had listened to the letter with a sad heart. When she did not
+speak, Avery felt that he should modify some of its terms if he would be
+fair to his absent acquaintance.
+
+"Of course he would have worded it a little differently if he had known
+that any one else would read it. He was desperate. He had gone through
+such a succession of disasters. If anything was going to fall it seemed
+as if he was sure to be under it, so I don't much wonder at his language
+after--"
+
+"I don't wonder at it at all," said Gertrude, looking steadily into the
+fire. "What seems wonderful, is the facts which his words portray. I can
+see that they are facts; but what I cannot see is--is--"
+
+"How he could express them so raspingly--so--?" began Avery, but she
+turned to him quite frankly surprised.
+
+"Oh, no! Not that. But how can it be right that it should be so? And if
+it is not right, why do not you men who have the power, do something to
+straighten things out? Is this sort of suffering absolutely _necessary_
+in the world?"
+
+It was this talk and its suggestions which had led Avery to first take
+seriously into consideration the proposition that he run for a seat
+in the Assembly. It seemed to him that men like himself, who had both
+leisure and convictions, might do some good work there, and he began to
+realize that the law-making of the state was left, for the most part, in
+very dangerous hands, and that a law once passed must inevitably help
+to crystallize public opinion in such a way as to retard freer or better
+action.
+
+"To think of allowing that class of men to set the standards about
+which public opinion forms and rallies!" he thought, as the professional
+politician arose before him, and his mind was made up. He would be a
+candidate. So the night after his experience at Grady's Pavilion he had
+another puzzle to lay before Gertrude. When he entered the hallway
+he was sorry to hear voices in the drawing-room. He had hoped to find
+Gertrude and her mother alone. His first impulse was to leave his card
+and call at another time, but the servant recognizing his hesitation,
+ventured a bit of information.
+
+"Excuse me, Mr. Avery, but I don't think they will be here long. It's a
+couple of--They--"
+
+"Thank you, James. Are they not friends of Miss Gertrude?"
+
+James smiled in a manner which displayed a large capacity for pity.
+
+"Well, sir, I shouldn't say they was exactly friends. No, sir, ner yet
+callers, sir. They're some of them Guilders."
+
+Avery could not guess what Gertrude would have gilders in the
+drawing-room for at that hour, but decided to enter. "Mr. Avery;" said
+James, in his most formal and perfunctory fashion, as he drew back the
+portière and announced the new arrival No one would have dreamed from
+the stolid front presented by the liveried functionary, that he had just
+exchanged confidences with the guest.
+
+"Let me introduce my friends to you, Mr. Avery," began Gertrude, and two
+figures arose, and from one came a gay little laugh, a mock courtesy,
+and "Law me! It's him! Well, if this don't beat the Dutch!"
+
+She extended her hand to him and laughed again. "We didn't shake hands
+last night, but now's we're regul'rly interduced I guess we will," she
+added.
+
+Avery took her hand, and then offered his to her companion, and bowed
+and smiled again.
+
+"Really, I shall begin to grow superstitious," he said, in an
+explanatory tone to Gertrude. "I came here to-night to see if I could
+arrange to have you three young ladies meet; to learn if there was a
+chance at the Guild to--"
+
+"Oh," smiled Gertrude, beginning to grasp the situation. "How very nice!
+But these two are my star girls at the Guild now. We were just arranging
+some work for next week, but--"
+
+"Yas, she wants to go down to that Spillini hole agin," broke in Ettie
+Berton, and Francis King glanced suspiciously from Gertrude to
+Avery. She wondered just what these two were thinking. She felt very
+uncomfortable and wished that he had not come in. She had not spoken
+since Avery entered, and he realized her discomfort.
+
+"You treated us pretty shabbily last night, Miss King," he said,
+smiling, and then he turned to Gertrude. "She left me in the middle of a
+remark. We met at Grady's Pavilion, and if I'm elected, I learn that the
+fathers of both of these young ladies will be my companions-in-arms in
+the Assembly. They--!" In spite of herself, Gertrude's face showed her
+surprise, but Ettie Berton broke in with a gay laugh.
+
+"Are you in politics? Law me! I'd never a believed it. I don't see how
+you're agoin' to get on unless you get a--"
+
+She realized that her remark was going to indicate a belief in certain
+incapacity in him, and she took another cue.
+
+"My pa says nobody hardly can't get on in politics by himself. You see
+my pa is a sort of a starter for Fan's pa in politics, 're else he'd
+never got on in the world. Fan's pa backs him, and he starts things that
+her pa wants started."
+
+Francis moved uneasily, and Gertrude said: "That is natural enough
+since they were friends here, and, I think you told me, were in business
+together, didn't you?"
+
+Ettie laughed, and clapped her hands gaily. "That's good! In business
+together! Oh, Lord, I'll tell pa that. He'll roar. Why, pa is a
+prerofessional starter. He ain't in business with no particular one only
+jest while the startin's done."
+
+The girl appeared to think that Avery and Gertrude were quite familiar
+with professional starters, and she rattled on gaily.
+
+"I thought I'd die the time he started them butcher shops for Fan's pa,
+though. He hadn't never learnt the difference between a rib roast 'n a
+soup bone, 'n he had to keep a printed paper hung up inside o' the ice
+chest so's he'd know which kind of a piece he got out to sell; but he
+talked so nice an' smooth all the time he _was_ a gettin' it out, an'
+tole each customer that the piece they asked fer was the 'choicest
+part of the animal,' but that mighty few folks had sense enough to know
+it--oh, it was funny! I used to get where I could hear him, and jest die
+a laughin'. He'd sell the best in the shop for ten cents a pound, an'
+he'd cut it which ever way they ast him to, an' make heavy weight. His
+price list was a holy show, but he jest scooped in all the trade around
+there in no time, an' the other shops had to move. Then you ought t'
+a seen Fan's pa come in there an' brace things up! Whew!" She laughed
+delightedly, and Francis's face flushed.
+
+"He braced prices up so stiff that some o' the customers left, but most
+of 'em stayed rather'n hunt up a new place to start books in. Pa, he'd
+started credit books with _all_ of 'em.
+
+"Pa, he was in the back room the first day Fan's pa and the new clerk
+took the shop, after pa got it good'n started. Him an' me most died
+laughin' at the kickin' o' the people. Every last one of 'em ast fer pa
+to wait on 'em, but Fan's pa he told 'em that he'd bankrupted hisself
+and had t' sell out to him. Pa said he wisht he had somethin' to
+bankrupt on. But, law, he'll never make no money. He ain't built that
+way. He's a tip top perfessional starter tho', ain't he, Fan?" she
+concluded with a gleeful reminiscent grimace at her friend. Francis
+shifted her position awkwardly, and tried to feel that everything
+was quite as it should be in good society, and Gertrude made a little
+attempt to divert the conversation to affairs of the Guild, but Ettie
+Berton, who appeared to look upon her father as a huge joke, and to feel
+herself most at home in discussing him, broke in again:--
+
+"But the time he started the 'Stable fer Business Horses,' was the
+funniest yet," and she laughed until her eyes filled with tears, and she
+dried them with the lower part of the palms of her hands, rubbing them
+red.
+
+"The boss told him not to take anything _but_ business horses. What he
+meant was, to be sure not to let in any fancy high-steppers, fer fear
+they'd get hurt or sick, an' he'd have trouble about 'em Well, pa didn't
+understand at first, an' he wouldn't take no mules, an' most all the
+business horses around there _was_ mules, an' when drivers'd ask him why
+he wouldn't feed 'em 'er take 'em in, he jest had t' fix up the funniest
+stories y' ever heard. He tole one man that he hadn't laid in the kind
+o' feed mules eat, n' the man told him he was the biggest fool to talk
+he ever see. The mule-man he--"
+
+Francis King had arisen, and started awkwardly toward Gertrude, with her
+hand extended.
+
+"I think we ought to go," she said, uneasily, her large eyes burning
+with mortification, and an oppressed sense of being at a disadvantage.
+
+"So soon?" said Gertrude, smiling as she took her hand, and laid her
+other arm about the shoulders of Ettie, who had hastened to place
+herself in the group. "I was so entertained that I did not realize that
+perhaps you ought to go before it grows late--oh," glancing at a tiny
+watch in her bracelet, "it is late--too late for you to go way down
+there alone. I will send James, or--"
+
+"Allow me the pleasure, will you not?" asked Avery, bowing first to
+Gertrude, and then toward Francis, and Gertrude said:--
+
+"Oh, thank you, if--" but Ettie clapped her hands in glee.
+
+"Well, that's too rich! Just as if we didn't go around by ourselves all
+the time, and--Lord! pa says if anybody carries me off he'd only go as
+far as the lamp-post, and drop me as soon as the light struck me! Now
+Fan's pretty, but--" she laughed, and made clawing movements in the air.
+"Nobody'll get away with Queen Fan's long's she's got finger-nails 'n
+teeth." She snapped her pretty little white teeth together with mock
+viciousness, and laughed again. "I'd just pity the fellow that tried any
+tomfoolery with Queen Fan. He'd wish he'd died young!"
+
+They all laughed a bit at this sally, and Avery said he did not want
+Miss King to be forced to extremities in self-protection while he was
+able to relieve her of the necessity.
+
+When James closed the door behind the laughing group, he glanced at Miss
+Gertrude to see what she thought of it, but he remarked to Susan later
+on, that "Miss Gertrude looked as if she was born 'n brought up that way
+herself. She didn't show no amusement ner no sarcasm in her face. An' as
+fer Mr. Avery, it was nothing short of astonishing, to see him offer his
+arms to those two Guilders as they started down the avenue."
+
+And Susan ventured it as her present belief, that if Gertrude's father
+once caught any of her Guilders around, he'd "make short work of the
+whole business. She ought't be ashamed o' herself, so she ought. Ketch
+_me,_ if I was in her shoes, a consortin' with--"
+
+"Anybody but me, Susie," put in the devoted James; but alas, for him,
+the stiff, unyielding hooked joint of his injured finger came first
+in contact with the wrist of the fair Susan as he essayed to clasp her
+hand, and she evaded the grasp and flung out of the room with a shiver.
+"Keep that old twisted base-ball bat off o' me! I--"
+
+"Oh, Susie!" said James, dolefully, to himself, as he slowly surrounded
+the offending member with the folds of his handkerchief, which gave it
+the appearance of being in hospital. "Oh, Susie! how kin you?"
+
+When John Martin, on his way, intending to drop in for the last act of
+the opera, passed Gertrude's door just in time to see Avery and the two
+girls come down the steps, his lip curled a bit, and his heart performed
+that strange feat which loving hearts have achieved in all the ages
+past, in spite of reason and of natural impulses of kindness. It took
+on a distinctly hard feeling towards Avery, and this feeling was not
+unmixed with resentment. "How dare he take girls like that to her house?
+I was a fool to take her to the Spillinis, but I'd never be idiot enough
+to take that type of girl to _her_ house. Avery's political freak has
+dulled his sense of propriety."
+
+Mr. Martin wondered vaguely if he ought not to say something to
+Gertrude's father, and then he thought it might possibly be better to
+touch lightly upon it himself in talking to her.
+
+He had heard some gossip at the opera and in the club, which indicated
+that society did not approve altogether of some of the things Gertrude
+had recently said and done; but that it smiled approvingly at what
+it believed to be as good as an engagement between the young lady and
+Selden Avery. Martin ground his teeth now as he thought of it, and
+glanced again at the retreating forms of Avery and the two girls.
+
+"It was that visit to the Spillinis, and the revelation of life which it
+gave her, that is to blame for it all," he groaned. "I was an accursed
+fool--an accursed fool!"
+
+That night Gertrude lay thinking how charmingly Selden Avery had met
+the situation, and how well he had helped carry it off with Ettie and
+Francis. "He seemed to look at it all just as I do," she thought. I felt
+that I knew just what he was thinking, and he certainly guessed that I
+wanted him to see them home, exactly as if they had been girls of our
+own set. "Poor little Ettie! I wonder what we can do with, or for, such
+as she? She is so hopelessly--happy and ignorant." Then she fell asleep,
+and dreamed of rescuing Ettie from the fangs a maddened dog, and Francis
+stood by and looked scornfully at Gertrude's lacerated hands, and then
+pointed to her little friend's mangled body and the smile upon her dead
+lips.
+
+"She never knew what hurt her, and she teased the dog to begin with,"
+she said. "You are maimed for life, and may go mad, just trying to help
+her--and she never knew and she never cared." Gertrude's dreamed had
+strayed and wandered into vagaries without form or outline, and in the
+morning nothing of it was left but an unreasonably heavy heart, and a
+restless desire to do--she knew not what.
+
+
+
+
+VII.
+
+When Avery took his seat in the Assembly he learned that Ettie Berton's
+father had been true to his calling. He still might be described as a
+professional starter. Any bill which was in need of some one to either
+introduce or offer a speech in its favor, found in John Berton an
+ever-ready champion.
+
+Not that he either understood or believed in all the bills he presented
+or advocated. Belief and understanding were not for sale; nor,
+indeed, were they always very much within his own grasp. He was in the
+Legislature to promote, or start, such measures as stood in need of his
+peculiar abilities. This was very soon understood, and many a bill
+which other men feared or hesitated to present found its way to him and
+through him to a reading. For a while Avery watched this process with
+amusement. He wrote to Gertrude, from time to time, some very humorous
+letters about it; but finally, one day a letter came which so bitterly
+denounced both King and Berton, that Gertrude wondered what could have
+wrought the sudden change.
+
+"He has introduced a bill which is now before my committee," he wrote,
+"that passes all belief. It is infamous beyond words to express, and,
+to my dismay, it finds many advocates beside King and Berton. That a
+conscienceless embruted inmate of an opium dive in Mott Street might
+acknowledge to himself in the dark, and when he was alone, that he could
+advocate such a measure, seems to me possible; but men who are in one
+sense reputable, who--many of them--look upon themselves as respectable;
+men who are fathers of girls and brothers of women, could even consider
+such a bill, I would not have believed possible, and yet, I am ashamed
+to say that I learn now for the first time, that our state is not the
+only one where similar measures have not only found advocates, but
+where there were enough moral lepers with voting power to establish such
+legislation. It makes me heartsick and desperate. I am ashamed of the
+human race. I am doubly ashamed that it is to my sex such infamous laws
+are due.
+
+"You were right, my dear Miss Gertrude; you were right. It is outrageous
+that we allow mere conscienceless politicians to legislate for
+respectable people, and yet my position here is neither pleasant, nor
+will it, I fear, be half so profitable as you hope--as I hoped, before I
+came and learned all I now know. But, believe me, I shall vote on every
+bill and make every speech, with your face before me, and as if I were
+making that particular law to apply particularly to you."
+
+Gertrude smiled as she re-read that part of his letter.
+
+She wondered what awful bill Ettie's father had presented. She had never
+before thought that a legislator might strive to enact worse laws than
+he already found in the statute books. She had thought most of the
+trouble was that they did not take the time and energy to repeal old,
+bad laws that had come to us from an ignorant or brutal past.
+
+It struck her as a good idea, that a man should never vote on a measure
+that he did not feel he was making a rule of action to apply to the
+woman for whom he cared most; she knew now that she was that woman for
+Selden Avery. He had told her that the night he came to bring the news
+that he was elected. It had been told in a strangely simple way.
+
+Her father and mother had laughingly congratulated him upon his
+election, and Mr. Poster had added, banteringly: "If one may
+congratulate a man upon taking a descent like that."
+
+Gertrude had held one of her father's hands in her own, and tried by
+gentle pressure to check him. Her father laughed, and added: "The little
+woman here is trying to head me off. She appears to think--"
+
+"Papa," said Gertrude, extending her other hand to Avery, "I do think
+that Mr. Avery is to be congratulated that he has the splendid courage
+to try to do something distinctly useful for other people, than simply
+for the few of us who are outside or above most of the horrors of life.
+I do--" Avery suddenly lifted her hand to his lips, and his eyes told
+the rest. "Mr. Foster," he said, still holding the girl's hand, and
+blushing painfully, "there can never be but one horror in the world too
+awful for me to face, and that would be to lose the full respect and
+confidence of your daughter. I know I have those now, and for the rest
+--" He glanced again at Gertrude. She was pale, and she was looking with
+an appeal in her eyes to her mother.
+
+Mrs. Foster moved a step nearer, and put her arm about the girl. "For the
+rest, Mr. Avery, for the rest--later on, later on," she said, kindly.
+"Gertrude has traveled very fast these past few months, but she is her
+mother's girl yet." Then she smiled kindly, and added: "Gertrude has set
+a terrible standard for the man she will care for. I tremble for him and
+I tremble for her."
+
+"Tut, tut," said her father, "there are no standards in love--none
+whatever. Love has its own way, and standards crumble--"
+
+"In the past, perhaps. But in the future--" began his wife.
+
+"In the future," said Gertrude, as she drew nearer to her mother, "in
+the future they may not need to crumble, because,--because--" Her eyes
+met Avery's, and fell. She saw that his muscles were tense, and his face
+was unhappy.
+
+"Because men will be great enough and true enough to rise to the ideals,
+and not need to crumble the ideals to bring them to their level."
+
+Avery bent forward and grasped her hand that was within her mother's.
+
+"Thank you," he said, tremulously. "Thank you, oh, darling! and the rest
+can wait," he said, to Mrs. Poster, and dropping both hands, he left the
+room and the house.
+
+Gertrude ran up-stairs and locked her door.
+
+Mr. Foster turned to his wife with a half amused, half vexed face.
+"Well, this is a pretty kettle of fish. What's to become of Martin, I'd
+like to know?"
+
+"John Martin has never had a ghost of a chance at any time--never," said
+his wife, slowly trailing her gown over the rug, and dragging with it a
+small stand that had caught its carved claw in the lace. It toppled and
+fell with a crash. The beautiful vase it had held was in fragments. "Oh,
+Katharine!" exclaimed her husband, springing forward to disengage her
+lace. "Oh, it is too bad, isn't it?"
+
+And Katherine Foster burst into tears, and with her arms suddenly thrown
+about her husband's neck she sobbed: "Oh, yes, it is too bad! It is too
+bad!" But it did not seem possible to her husband that the broken vase
+could have so affected her, and surely no better match could be asked
+for Gertrude. It could not be that. He was deeply perplexed, and
+Katherine Foster, with a searching look in her face, kissed him sadly as
+one might kiss the dead, and went to her daughter's room.
+
+She tapped lightly and then said, "It is I, daughter."
+
+The girl opened the door and as quickly closed and locked it. Instantly
+their arms were around each other and both were close to tears.
+
+"Don't try to talk, darling," whispered Mrs. Foster, as they sat down
+upon the couch. "Don't try to talk. I understand better than you do
+yet, and oh, Gertrude, your mother loves you!"
+
+"Yes, mamma," said the girl, hoarsely. "Dear little mamma--poor little
+mamma, we all love you;" and Mrs. Foster sighed.
+
+
+
+
+VIII.
+
+The day Gertrude received Avery's letter about bill number 408, she
+asked her father what the bill was about. He looked at her in surprise,
+and then at his wife. "I don't know anything about it, child," he said;
+"Why?"
+
+Gertrude drew from her pocket Avery's letter and read that part of it.
+Her father's face clouded.
+
+"What business has he to worry you with his dirty political work? I
+infer from what he says that it is a bill that I've only heard mentioned
+once or twice. The sort of thing they do in secret sessions and keep
+from the newspapers in the main. That is, they are only barely named in
+the paper and under a number or heading which people don't understand.
+I'm disgusted with Avery--perfectly!" Gertrude was surprised, but with
+that ignorance and absolute sincerity of youth, she appealed to her
+mother.
+
+"Mamma, do you see any reason why, from that letter, papa should be
+vexed with Mr. Avery? It seemed to me to have just the right tone; but I
+am sorry he did not tell me just what the bill is."
+
+"You let me catch him telling you, if it's what I think it is," retorted
+her father, rather hotly. "It's not fit for your ears. Good women have
+no business with such knowledge and--"
+
+Mrs. Foster held up a warning finger to her daughter, but the girl had
+not been convinced.
+
+"Don't good men know such things, papa? Don't such bills deal with
+people in a way which will touch women, too? I can't see why you put it
+that way. If a bill is to be passed into a law, and it is of so vile a
+nature as you say and as this letter indicates, in whose interest is it
+to be silent or ignorant? Do you want such a bill passed? Would mamma or
+I?"
+
+Her father laughed, and rose from the table. "It is in the interest
+of nothing good. No, I should say if you or your mother, or any other
+respectable mother at all, were in the Legislature, no such bill would
+have a ghost of a chance; but--"
+
+Gertrude's eyes were fixed upon her father. They were very wide open and
+perplexed.
+
+"Then it can be only in the interest of the vilest and lowest of the
+race that good men keep silent, and prefer to have good women ignorant
+and helpless in such--" she began; but her father turned at the door
+and said, nervously and almost sharply, "Gertrude, if Avery has no more
+sense than to start you thinking about such things, I advise you to
+cut his acquaintance. Such topics are not fit for women; I am perfectly
+disgusted with--"
+
+As he was passing out of the dining-room, John Martin entered the street
+door and faced him. "Hello, Martin! Glad to see you! The ladies are
+still at luncheon; won't you come right in here and join them in a cup
+of chocolate?"
+
+He was heartily glad of the interruption, and felt that it was very
+timely indeed that Mr. Martin had dropped in.
+
+"No, I can't take off my top-coat. Get yours. I want you to join me in
+a spin in the park. I've got that new filly outside." Mr. Foster ran
+up-stairs to get ready for the drive, and the ladies insisted that a
+cup of hot chocolate was the very thing to prepare Mr. Martin for the
+nipping air. He was a trifle ill at ease. He wanted to speak of Selden
+Avery, and he feared if he did so that he would say the wrong thing.
+He had come to-day, partly to have a talk with his friend Foster about
+certain gossip he had heard. Fate took the reins.
+
+In rising, Gertrude had dropped Avery's letter. John Martin was the
+first to see it. He laughingly offered it to her with the query: "Do you
+sow your love letters about that way, Miss Gertrude?"
+
+"Gertrude's love letters take the form of political speeches just now,
+and bills and committee reports and the like," laughed her mother. "Her
+father was just showing his teeth over that one, He thinks women have
+no--"
+
+"Mr. Martin, tell me truly," broke in the girl, "tell me truly, don't
+you think that we are all equally interested in having only good laws
+made? And don't you think if a proposed measure is too bad for good
+women even to be told what it is, that it is bad enough for all good
+people to protest against?"
+
+"How are they going to protest if they don't know what it is?" laughed
+Martin. "Well, Miss Gertrude, I believe that is the first time I ever
+suspected you to be of Celtic blood. But what dreadful measure is Avery
+advocating now?" he smiled. "Really, I shouldn't have believed it of
+Avery!"
+
+"What!" exclaimed Mr. Poster, entering with his top-coat buttoned to the
+chin, and his driving-hat in hand. Gertrude still held the letter. "No,
+nor should I have believed it of Avery. It was an outrageous thing for
+him to do. What business has Gertrude or Katherine with his disgusting
+old bills. Just before you came in I advised Gertrude to cut him
+entirely, and--"
+
+Mrs. Foster was trying to indicate to her husband that he was off the
+track, and that Mr. Martin did not understand him; but he had the bit
+in his teeth and went on. "You agree with me now, don't you? What do you
+think of his mentioning such things to Gertrude?" He reached over
+and took the letter from his daughter's hand, and read a part of the
+obnoxious paragraph.
+
+John Martin's face was a study. He glanced at the two ladies, and then
+fixed his eyes upon Gertrude's father.
+
+"Good Gad!" he said, slowly and almost below his breath. "If I were in
+your place I should shoot him. The infamous--" He checked himself, and
+the two men withdrew. Gertrude and her mother waved at them from the
+window, and then the girl said: "I intend to know what that bill is.
+What right have men to make laws that they themselves believe are too
+infamous for good women even to know about? Don't you believe if all
+laws or bills had to be openly discussed before and with women, it would
+be better, mamma? I do."
+
+Her mother's cheek was against the cold glass of the window. She was
+watching the receding forms. Presently she turned slowly to her daughter
+and said, in a trembling tone:--
+
+"Such bills as this one," she drew a small printed slip from her bosom
+and handed it to Gertrude, "such bills as that would never be dreamed
+of by men if they knew they must pass the discussion of a pure girl or
+a mother--never! Their only chance is secret session, and the fact that
+even men like your--like Mr. Martin and--and--" she was going to say
+"your father," but the girl pressed her hand and she did not. "That even
+such as they--for what reason heaven only knows--think they are serving
+the best interests of the women they love by a silence which fosters and
+breeds just such measures as--"
+
+Gertrude was reading the queer, blind phraseology of the bill. Katherine
+had watched her daughter's face as she talked, and now the girl's lips
+were moving and she read audibly: "be, and is hereby enacted, that
+henceforth the legal age in the state of New York whereat a female may
+give consent to the violation of her own person shall be reduced to ten
+years."
+
+Gertrude dropped the paper in her lap and looked up like a frightened,
+hunted creature. "Great God!" she exclaimed, with an intensity born of
+a sudden revelation. "Great God! and they call themselves men! And other
+men keep silence--furnish all the soil and nurture for infamy like
+that! Those who keep silence are as guilty as the rest! Those who try
+to prevent women from knowing--oh, mamma!" Her eyes were intense. She
+sprang to her feet; "and John Martin, who thinks he loves _me_ is one
+of those men! Knowing such a bill as that is pending, his indignation is
+aroused, not at the bill, not at the men who try to smuggle it through,
+not at the awful thing it implies, but that so strict a silence is not
+kept that such as _we_ may not know of it! He blames Selden Avery for
+coming to me--to us--with his splendid chivalry, and sharing with us his
+horror, making us the confidants of that inner conscience which sees,
+in the intended victims of this awful bill, his little sisters and yours
+and mine!" There were indignant tears in her eyes. She closed them, and
+her white lips were drawn tense. Presently she asked, without opening
+her eyes: "Mamma, do you suppose if you, instead of Mr. Avery, were
+chairman of that committee, that such a bill as that would ever have
+been presented? Do you suppose, if any mother on earth held the veto
+power, that such a bill would ever disgrace a statute book? Are there
+enough men, even of a class who generally go to the Legislature, who,
+in spite of their fatherhood, in spite of the fact that they have little
+sisters, are such beasts as to pass a bill like that? A ten-year-old
+girl! A mere baby! And--oh, mamma! it is too hideous to believe, even
+of--such a bill could never pass. Never on earth! Surely, Ettie Berton,
+poor little thing, has the only father living who is capable of that!"
+
+Mrs. Foster opened her lips to say that several states already had the
+law, and that one had placed the age at seven; but she checked herself.
+Her daughter's excitement was so great, she decided to wait. The
+experience of the past few months had awakened the fire in the nature of
+this strong daughter of hers. She had seen the cool, steady, previously
+indifferent, well-poised girl stirred to the very depths of her nature
+over the awful conditions of poverty, ignorance, and vice she had, for
+the first time, learned to know. Gertrude had become a regular student
+of some of the problems of life, and she had carried her studies into
+practical investigation. It had grown to be no new thing for her to
+take Francis, or Ettie, or both, when she went on these errands, and
+the study of their points of view--of the effect of it all upon their
+ignorance-soaked minds, had been one of the most touching things to her.
+Their imaginations were so stunted--so embryonic, so undeveloped that
+they saw no better way. To them, ignorance, poverty, squalor, and vice
+were a necessary part of life. Wealth, comfort, happiness, ambition
+were, naturally and rightly, perquisites, some way, some how, of the
+few.
+
+"God rules, and all is as he wishes it or it would not be that way,"
+sagely remarked Francis King, one day. It had startled Gertrude. Her
+philosophy, her observation, her reason, and her religion were in a
+state of conflict just then. She had alway supposed that she was an
+Episcopalian with all that this implied. She was beginning to doubt it
+at times.
+
+Mrs. Foster looked at her daughter now, as she sat there flushed and
+excited. She wondered what would come of it all. She had always studied
+this daughter of hers, and tried to follow the girl's moods. Now she
+thought she would cut across them.
+
+"Gertrude, you may put that bill with your letter. Mr. Avery mailed it to
+me. Of course he meant that I should show it to you if I thought best.
+I did think best, but now--but--I don't want you to excite yourself
+too--" She broke off suddenly. Her daughter's eyes were upon her in
+surprise. Mrs. Foster laughed a little nervously, and kissed the girl's
+hand as it lay in her own. "It seems rather droll for your gay little
+mother to caution you against losing control of yourself, doesn't it?"
+she asked. "You who were always all balance wheel, as your father says.
+But--"
+
+"Mamma, don't you think Mr. Avery did perfectly right to send me that
+letter and this to you?" broke in Gertrude, as if she had not heard the
+admonition of her mother, and had followed her own thoughts from some
+more distant point.
+
+"Perfectly," said her mother. "He was evidently deeply disturbed by the
+bill. He felt that you were, and should be, his confidant. He simply did
+not dream of hiding it from you, I believe. It was the spontaneous act
+of one who so loves you that his whole life--all of that which moves him
+greatly--must, as a matter of course, be open to you. I thought that
+all out when the bill came addressed to me. He--" The girl kissed her in
+silence.
+
+"You have such splendid self-respect, Gertrude. Most of us--most
+women--have none. We do not expect, do not demand, the least respect
+that is real from men. They have no respect for our opinions, and so
+upon all the real and important things of life, they hold out to us the
+sham of silence as more respectful than candor. And we--most of us--are
+weak enough to say we like it. Most of us--"
+
+Gertrude slipped down upon a cushion at the feet of her mother, and put
+her young, strong arms about the supple waist. She had of late read
+from time to time so much of the unrest and scorn back of the gay and
+compliant face of her mother. "Mamma, my real mamma," she said, softly,
+"I<am so sorry for papa that he should have missed so much, so much that
+might have been his! A mental comrade like you--"
+
+"Men of your father's generation did not want mental comrades in their
+wives, Gertrude. They--"
+
+"A telegram, Miss Gertrude," said James, drawing aside the portiere.
+
+"The bill has been rushed through. Passed. Nineteen majority. Avery."
+Gertrude read it and handed it to her mother, and both women sat as if
+stunned by a blow.
+
+
+
+
+IX.
+
+At the close of the Legislature, John Berton, professional starter, and
+his friend and ally, the father of Francis King, had returned to the
+city. Francis had grown, so her father thought, more handsome and less
+agreeable than ever. Her eyes were more dissatisfied, and she was, if
+possible, less pliant. She and Ettie Berton were working now in a store,
+and Francis said that she did not like it at all. The money she liked.
+It helped her to dress more as she wished, and then it had always
+cut Francis to the quick to be compelled to ask her father for money
+whenever she needed it, even for car fare.
+
+She had lied a good many times. Her whole nature rebelled against
+lying, but even this was easier to her than the status of dependence and
+beggary, so she had lied often about the price of shoes, or of a hat or
+dress, that there might be a trifle left over as a margin for her use in
+other ways. Her father was not unusually hard with her about money, only
+that he demanded a strict accounting before he gave it to her.
+
+"What in thunder do you want of money?" he would ask, more as a matter
+of habit than anything else. "How much 'll it take? Humph! Well, I guess
+you'll have to have it, but--" and so the ungracious manner of giving
+angered and humiliated her.
+
+"Pa, give me ten cents; I want it fer car fare. Thanks. Now fork over
+six dollars; I got to get a dress after the car gets me to the store,"
+was Ettie Berton's method. Her father would pretend not to have the
+money, and she would laugh and proceed to rifle his pockets. The scuffle
+would usually end in the girl getting more than she asked for, and was
+no unpleasant experience to her, and it appeared to amuse her father
+greatly. It was not, therefore, the same motive which actuated the two
+when they decided to try their fortunes as shop girls. The desire to be
+with Francis, to be where others were, for the sight and touch of the
+pretty things, for new faces and for mild excitement, were moving causes
+with Ettie Berton. The money she liked, too; but if she could have had
+the place without the money or the money without the place, her choice
+would have been soon made. She would stay at the store. That she was a
+general favorite was a matter of course. She would do anything for the
+other girls, and the floorwalkers and clerks found her always obedient
+and gaily willing to accept extra burdens or to change places. For some
+time past, however, she had been on a different floor from the one where
+Francis presided over a trimming counter, and the girls saw little of
+each other, except on their way to and from the store.
+
+At last this changed too, for Francis was obliged to remain to see that
+the stock of her department was properly put away. At first Ettie waited
+for her, but later on she had fallen into the habit of going with a
+child nearer her own age, a little cash girl. Ettie was barely fourteen,
+and her new friend a year or two younger. At last Francis King found
+that the motherless child had invited her new friends home with her, and
+had gone with them to their homes.
+
+As spring came on, Ettie went one Sunday to Coney Island, and did not
+tell Francis until afterward. She said that she had had a lovely time,
+hut she appeared rather disinclined to talk about it. At the Guild one
+Wednesday evening, after the class began again in the fall, Francis King
+told Gertrude this, and asked her advice. She said: "It's none o' my
+business, and she don't like me much any more, but I thought maybe I had
+ought to tell you, for--for--since I been in the store, I've learnt a
+good deal about--about things; an' Ettie she don't seem to learn much of
+anything."
+
+"Is Ettie still living at her cousin's?" asked Gertrude.
+
+"Yes," said Francis, scornfully, "but she 'bout as well be livin' by
+herself. Her cousin's always just gaddin' 'round tryin' t' get
+married. I never did see such an awful fool. Before Et's pa went to the
+Legislature, we all did think he was goin' t' marry her, but now--"
+
+"Legislative honors have turned his head, have they?" smiled Gertrude,
+intent on her own thoughts in another direction. She was not, therefore,
+prepared for the sudden fling of temper in the strange girl beside
+her. "Yes, it has; 'n if it don't turn some other way before long,
+I'll break his neck for him. _I_ ain't marryin' a widower if I do like
+Ettie."
+
+In spite of herself, Gertrude started a little. She looked at Francis
+quite steadily for a moment, and then said: "Could you and Ettie come
+to my house and spend the day next Sunday? I'm glad you told me of
+Ettie's--of--about the change in her manner toward you."
+
+"Don't let on that I told you anything," said Francis, as they parted.
+
+Since they had been in the store they had not gone regularly to the
+weekly evening Guild meetings, and Gertrude had seen less of them. She
+was surprised, however, on the following Sunday, to see the strange,
+mysterious change in Ettie. A part of her frank, open, childish manner
+was gone, and yet nothing more mature had taken its place. There would
+be flashes of her usual manner, but long silences, quite foreign to the
+child, would follow. At the dinner table she grew deadly ill, and had to
+be taken up stairs. Gertrude tucked a soft cover about her on the couch
+in her own room, and gave her smelling salts and a trifle of wine. The
+child drank the wine but began to cry.
+
+"Oh, don't cry, Ettie," said Gertrude, stroking her hair gently. "You'll
+be over it in a little while. I think our dining-room is much warmer
+than yours, and it was very hot to-day. Then your trying to eat the
+olives when you don't like them, might easily make you sick. You'll be
+all right after a little I'm sure. Don't cry."
+
+"That's the same kind of wine I had that day at Coney Island," she said,
+and Gertrude thought how irrelevant the remark was, and how purely of
+physical origin were the tears of such a child.
+
+"Would you like a little more?" asked Gertrude, smiling.
+
+Ettie shivered, and closed her eyes.
+
+"No; I don't like it. I guess it ain't polite to say so, but--Oh, of
+course _maybe_ I'd like it if I was well, but it made me sick that time,
+an' so I don't like it now when I _am_ sick." She laughed in a childish
+way, and then she drew Gertrude's face down near her own. "Say, I'll
+tell you the solemn truth. It made me tight that day. He told me so
+afterwards, n' I guess it did."
+
+Here was a revelation, indeed. Gertrude stroked the fluffy hair, gently.
+She was trying to think of just the right thing to say. It was growing
+dark in the room. Ettie reached up again and drew Gertrude's face
+down. "Say," she whispered, "you won't be mad at me for that, will you?
+He told me I wasn't to blab to anybody; but it always seems as if you
+wouldn't be mad at me, and"--she began to weep again.
+
+"Don't cry," said Gertrude, again, gently. "Of course I am not angry
+with you. I am sorry it happened, but--Ettie, who is _he?_" Ettie sobbed
+on, and held her arms close about Gertrude's neck. Again the older girl
+said, with lips close to the child's ear:
+
+"Don't you think it would be better to tell me who 'he' is? Is he so
+young as to not know better than to advise you that way, dear?"
+
+"He's forty," sobbed Ettie, "an' he's rich, an' he's got a girl of his
+own as big as me. I saw her one day in the store. He's the cashier."
+
+Gertrude shivered, and the child felt the movement.
+
+"Don't you ever, ever tell," she panted, "or he'll kill me--and so would
+pa."
+
+"Oh, he would, would he?" exclaimed Francis, who had stolen silently
+into the room and had stood unobserved in the darkness. "The cashier!
+the mean devil! I always hated his beady eyes, and he tried his games on
+me! But I'll kill him before he shall go--do you any real harm, Ettie! I
+will! I will! Why didn't you tell me? I watched for a while and then I
+thought--I thought he had given it up. Oh, Ettie, Ettie!" The tall form
+of the girl seemed to rise even higher in the darkness, and one could
+feel the fire of her great eyes. Her hands were clenched and her muscles
+tense.
+
+Ettie was sobbing anew, and Gertrude, holding her hand, was stroking the
+moist forehead and trying to quiet her.
+
+"Oh, Fan! Oh, Fan! I didn't want you to know," sobbed the child, with
+pauses between her words. "He said nobody needn't ever know if I'd do
+just's he told me. He said--but when pa came home I was so scared, an'
+I'm sick most all the time, an'--an', oh, if I wasn't so awful afraid
+to die I'd wisht I _was_ dead!"
+
+"Dead!" gasped Francis, grasping Ettie's wrist and pulling her hand
+from her face in a frenzy of the new light that was dawning upon her
+half-dazed but intensely stimulated mental faculties. She half pulled
+the smaller girl to her feet.
+
+"Dead! Ettie Berton, you tell me the God's truth or I'll tear him to
+pieces right in the store. You tell me the God's truth! has he--done
+anything awful to you?" A young tiger could not have seemed more savage,
+and Ettie clung with her other arm to Gertrude.
+
+"No! No! No!" she shrieked, and struggled to free herself from the
+clutch upon her wrist. Then with the pathetic superstition and ignorance
+of her type: "Cross my heart I Hope I may die!" she added, and as
+Francis relaxed her grasp upon the wrist, Ettie fell in an unconscious
+little heap upon the floor.
+
+Francis was upon her knees beside her in an instant, and Gertrude was
+about to ring for a light and for her mother when Francis moaned: "Oh,
+send for a doctor, quick. Send for a doctor! She was lying and she
+crossed her heart. She will die! She will die!"
+
+
+
+
+X.
+
+But Ettie Berton did not die. Perhaps it would have been quite as well
+for her if she had died before the impotent and frantic rage of
+her father had still further darkened the pathetically appealing,
+love-hungry little heart, whose every beat had been a throbbing, eager
+desire to be liked, to please, to acquiesce; to the end that she should
+escape blame, that she might sail on the smooth and pleasant sea of
+general praise and approval.
+
+Alas, the temperament which had brought her the dangerous stimulus of
+praise, for self-effacement, had joined hands with opportunity to wreck
+the child's life--and no one was more bitter in his denunciation than
+her father's friend and her aforetime admirer--Representative King.
+"If she was a daughter o' mine I'd kill her," he repeated to his own
+household day after day. "She sh'd never darken _my_ door agin. That's
+mighty certain. It made me mad the other day to hear Berton talk about
+takin' her back home. The old fool! What does he want of her? An' what
+kind of an example that I'd like t' know t' set t' decent girls? I told
+him right then an' there if he let his soft heart do him that a'way I
+was done with him for good an' all, n' if I ketch you a goin' up there
+t' see her agin, you can just stay away from here, that's all!" This
+last had been to Francis, and Francis had shut her teeth together very
+hard, and the glitter in her eyes might have indicated to a wiser man
+that it was not chiefly because of his presence there that this daughter
+cared to return to her home after her clandestine visits to Ettie
+Berton. A wiser man, too, might have guessed that the prohibition would
+not prohibit, and that poor little Ettie Berton would not be deserted by
+her loyal friend because of his displeasure.
+
+"I have told her that she may live with us by and by," said Gertrude to
+Seldon Avery one afternoon; "but that is no solution of the problem.
+And besides it is her father's duty to care for her and to do it without
+hurting the child's feelings, too. Can't you go to him and have a talk
+with him? You say he seems a kind-hearted, well-meaning, easily-led man.
+Beside, he has no right to blame her. He has done more than any one else
+in this state to make the path of the cashier easy and smooth. If it
+were not for poor little Ettie I should be heartily glad of it all--of
+the lesson for him. Can't you go to him and to that Mr. King and make
+them see the infamy of their work, and force them to undo it? Can't you?
+Is there no way?"
+
+Avery had gone. He argued in vain. "Why do you blame the cashier," he
+had said to Berton. "He has committed no legal offence. Our laws say he
+has done no wrong. Then why blame him? Why blame Ettie? She is a mere
+yielding, impulsive child, and, surely, if he has done no wrong she has
+not. If--"
+
+"Now look a-here, Mr. Avery," said John Berton, hotly, "I know what
+you're a-hittin' at an' you can jest save your breath. I didn't help
+pass that law t' apply to _my_ girl, n' you know it damned well. I ain't
+in no mood just now t' have you throw it up to me that she was about
+the first one it ketched, neather. How was I a-goin' to know that? That
+there bill wasn't intended t' apply t' _my_ girl, I tell you. An' then
+she hadn't ought to a said she went with him willin'ly, either. If she
+hadn't a said that we could a peppered him, but as it is he's all right,
+an--"
+
+"That is what the law contemplates, isn't it?--for other girls, of
+course, not for yours," began Avery, whose natural impulses of kindness
+and generosity he was holding back.
+
+"Now you hold on!" exclaimed Berton, feebly groping about for a reply.
+"You know I never got up that bill. You know mighty well the man that
+got it up an' come there an' lobbied for it, was one o' _your_ own
+kind--a silk stocking.
+
+"You know I only started it 'n' sort o' fathered it for _him_. I ain't
+no more to blame than the others. Go 'n talk t' them. I've had my dose.
+Go 'n talk t' King. He says yet that it's a mighty good bill--but I
+ain't so damned certain as I was. It don't look 's reasonable t' me's it
+did last session." Avery left him, in the hope that a little later on
+he would conclude that his present attitude toward his daughter might
+undergo like modification, with advantage to all concerned. It was early
+in the evening, and Avery concluded to step into a workingman's club on
+his way to his lodgings. He had no sooner entered the door, than someone
+recognized him as the candidate of a year ago. There was an immediate
+demand that he give them a speech. He had had no thought of speaking,
+but the opening tempted him, and the hand clapping was indent. The
+chairman introduced him as "the only kid-glove member in the last
+Legislature who didn't sell his soul, to monopoly, and put a mortgage on
+his heavenly home at the behest of Wall Street."
+
+The applause which met this sally was long sustained, and the laughter,
+while hearty, was not altogether pleasant of tone. Avery stood until
+there was silence. Then he began with a quiet smile.
+
+"Mr. Chairman and gentlemen." He paused, and looked over the room again.
+"I beg your pardon. I am accustomed to face men only. Mr. Chairman,
+_ladies_ and gentlemen." There was a ripple of laughter over the room.
+"Let me say how glad I am to make that amendment, and how glad I shall
+be, for one, when I am able to make it in the body to which I have the
+honor to belong--the Legislature." Some one said: "ah, there," but he
+did not pause. "You labor men have taken the right view of it in this
+club. There is not a question, not one, in all the domain of labor or
+legislation which does not strike at woman's welfare as vitally as it
+does at man's; not one." There was feeble applause. "But I will go
+further. I will say, there is not only not an economic question which is
+not _as_ vital to her, but it is far _more_ vital than it is to man. The
+very fact of her present legal status rests upon the other awful fact of
+her absolute financial dependence upon men." Someone laughed, and Avery
+fired up. "This one fact has made sex maniacs of men, and peopled this
+world with criminals, lunatics, and liars! This one fact! This one
+fact!"
+
+His intensity had at last forced silence, and quieted those members who
+were at first inclined to take as a gallant joke his opening remarks.
+"Let me take a text, for what I want to say to you on the economic
+question, from the Bible.
+
+"Oh, give us a rest!"
+
+"Suffer little children!"
+
+"Remember the Sabbath day!" and like derisive calls, mingled with a
+laugh and distinct hisses. The gavel beat in vain; Avery waited. At last
+there was silence, and he said: "I was not joking. The fact that you
+all know me as a freethinker misled you; but although I did say that
+I wished to take as a sort of text a passage from the Bible, I was in
+earnest. This is the text: 'The rich man's wealth is his strong city;
+the destruction of the poor is their poverty.' Again there was a laugh,
+with a different ring to it, and clapping of hands.
+
+"I think that I may assume," he went on, "that no audience before
+which I am likely to appear, will suspect me of accepting the Bible as
+altogether admirable. Some of the prophets and holy men of old, as I
+read of their doings in the scriptures, always impress me as having been
+long overdue at the penitentiary."
+
+There was laughter and applause at this sally, and the intangible
+something which emanates from an audience which tells a speaker that he
+now has a mental grasp upon his hearers, made itself felt. The slight
+air of resentment which arose when he had said that he should refer for
+his authority to the Bible subsided, and he went on.
+
+"But notwithstanding these facts and opinions, one sometimes finds in
+the Bible things that are true. Sometimes they are not only true, but
+they are also good. Again they are good in fact, in sentiment, and in
+diction. Now when this sort of conjunction occurs, I am strongly moved
+to drop for the time such differences as I may have with other portions
+and sentiments, and give due credit where credit is due.
+
+"Therefore, when I find in the tenth chapter of Proverbs this: 'The rich
+man's wealth is his strong city; the destruction of the poor is their
+poverty,' I shake hands with the author, and travel with him for this
+trip at least. The prophet does not say that their destruction is
+ignorance, or vice, or sin, or any of the ordinary blossoms of poverty
+which it is the fashion to refer to as its root. He tells us the
+truth--the destruction of the poor _is_ their _poverty._
+
+"And who are the poor? Are they not those who, in spite of their labor,
+their worth, and their value to the state as good citizens are still
+dependent upon the good-will--the charity, I had almost said--of someone
+else who has power over the very food they have earned a hundred times
+over, and the miserable rags they are allowed to wear instead of the
+broadcloth they have earned? Are they not those who, because of economic
+conditions, are suppliants where they should be sovereign citizens,
+dependents where they should be free and independent and self-respecting
+persons?"
+
+"Right you are!" "Drive it home!" came with the applause from the
+audience.
+
+"Are they not those who must obey oppressive laws made by those who
+legislate against the helpless and in favor of the powerful? Are they
+not those whose voices are silenced by subjection, whose wishes and
+needs are trampled beneath the feet of the controlling class?"
+
+The applause was ready now and instant. Avery paused. There was silence.
+"And who are these?" he asked, and paused again.
+
+"What class of people more than any other--more than all others--fits
+and fills each and every one of these queries?" "Laboring men!" shouted
+several. "All of us!" "No," said Avery, "you are wrong. To all of
+you--to all so-called laboring men they do apply; but more than to
+these, in more insidious ways, do they apply to laboring women. To all
+women, in fact; for no matter how poor a man is, his wife and daughters
+are poorer; no matter how much of a dependent he is, the woman is more
+so, for she is the dependent of a dependent, the serf of a slave, the
+chattel of a chattel! The suppliant, not only for work and wage, but the
+suppliant at the hands of sex power for equality with even the man who
+is under the feet and the tyranny of wealth. They share together that
+tyranny and poverty, but he thrusts upon her alone the added outrage of
+sex subjugation and legal disability." He paused, and held up his hand.
+Then he said, slowly, making each word stand alone:--
+
+"And I tell you, gentlemen, with my one term's experience in the
+Legislature and what it has taught me--I tell you that there is no
+outrage which wealth and power can commit upon man that it cannot and
+does not commit doubly upon woman! There is no cruelty upon all this
+cruel earth half so terrible as the tyranny of sex! And again, I tell
+you that to woman every man is a capitalist in wealth and in power, and
+I reiterate:--the destruction of the poor is their _poverty._ It has
+been doubly woman's destruction. Her absolute financial dependence upon
+men has given him the power and--alas, that I should be compelled to say
+it!--the will, to deny her all that is best and loftiest in life,
+and even to crush out of her the love of liberty and the dignity of
+character which cares for the better things. Look at her education! Look
+at the disgraceful 'annexes' and side shifts which are made to prevent
+our sisters from acquiring even the same, or as good, an education as we
+claim for ourselves. Look--" He paused and lowered his voice. "Look at
+the awful, the horrible, the beastly laws we pass for women, while
+we carefully keep them in a position where they cannot legislate for
+themselves. Do you know there is no law in any state--and no legislature
+would dare try to pass one--which would bind a ten-year-old boy to any
+contract which he might have been led, driven, or coaxed into, or have
+voluntarily made, if that contract should henceforth deprive him of all
+that gives to him the comforts, joys, or decencies of life! All men hold
+that such a boy is not old enough to make such a contract. That any
+one older than he, who leads him into a crime or misdemeanor, or the
+transfer of property, or his personal rights and liberty, is guilty of
+legal offence. The boy is without blame, and his contract is absolutely
+void--illegal. But in more than one state we hold that a little girl of
+ten may make the most fatal contract ever made by or for woman, and that
+she is old enough to be held legally responsible for her act and for her
+judgment. The one who leads her into it, though he be forty, fifty, or
+sixty years old, is guiltless before the law. I tell you, gentlemen,
+there is no crime possible to humanity that is as black as that infamous
+law, sought to be re-enacted by our own state at this very time, and
+which has already passed one house!" He explained, as delicately as he
+could, the full scope and meaning of the bill. Surprise, consternation,
+swept over the room. Men, a few of whom had heard of the bill before,
+but had given it scant attention, saw a horror and disgust in the
+eyes of the women which aroused for the first time in their minds, a
+flickering sense of the enormity of such a measure. No one present
+was willing that any woman should believe him guilty of approving such
+legislation, and yet Avery impressed anew upon them that the bill had
+passed one house with a good majority. On his way out of the room, a
+tall girl stepped to his side.
+
+For the moment he had not recognized her. It was Francis King. She
+looked straight at him.
+
+"Did my father vote for that bill?" she asked, without a prelude of
+greeting. Avery hesitated.
+
+"Oh, is it you, Miss King?" he asked, "I did not see you before. Do you
+come here often?"
+
+"Not very," she said, still looking at him, and with fire gathering in
+her eyes. "Did my father vote for that bill?" she repeated.
+
+"Ah--I--to tell you the truth," began Avery, but she put out her hand
+and caught firm hold of his arm.
+
+"Did my father vote for that bill?" she insisted, and Avery said:
+--"Yes, I'm sorry to say, he did, Miss King; but--so many did, you know.
+The fact is--"
+
+Her fingers grasped his arm like a vice, and her lips were drawn. "Did
+Ettie's pa?" she demanded.
+
+Avery saw the drift of her thought.
+
+"God forgive him! yes," he said, and his own eyes grew troubled and
+sympathetic.
+
+"God may forgave him if he's a mind to," exclaimed Francis, "but I don't
+want no such God around me, if he does. Any God that wants to forgive
+men for such work as that ain't fit to associate with no other kind of
+folks _but_ such men; but I don't mean to allow a good little girl like
+Ettie to live in the same house with a beast if I know it. She shan't
+go home again now, not if her pa begs on his knees. He ain't fit to wipe
+her shoes. 'N my pa!" she exclaimed, scornfully. "My pa talkin' about
+Ettie being bad, and settin' bad examples for decent girls! Him a
+talkin'! Him livin' in the same house with my little sister 'n me! Him!"
+The girl was wrought to a frenzy of scorn, and contempt, and anger. They
+had passed out with the rest into the street.
+
+"Shall I walk home with you?" asked Avery. "Are you alone?"
+
+"Yes, I'm alone," she said, with a little dry sob. "I'm alone, an' I
+ain't goin' home any more. Not while he lives there. It's no decent
+place for a girl--living in the house with a man like that. I ain't
+goin' home. I'm goin' to--" It rushed over her brain that she had no
+other place to go. She held her purse in her hand; it had only two
+dollars and a few cents in it. She had bought her new dress with the
+rest. Her step faltered, but her eyes were as fiery and as hard as ever.
+
+"You'd better go home," said Avery, softly. "It will only be the harder
+for you, if you don't. I'm sorry--"
+
+She turned on him like a tigress. They were in Union Square now. "Even
+_you_ think it is all right for good girls to be under the control and
+live with men like that! Even _you_ think I ought to go home, an' let
+him boss me an' make rules fer me, an' me pretend to like it an believe
+as he does, an' look up to him, an' think his way's right an' best! Even
+_you!_"
+
+"No, no," said Avery, softly. "You must be fair, Miss King. I don't
+think it's right; but--but--I said it was best just now, for--what else
+can you do?" The girl was facing him as they stood near the fountain in
+the middle of the square.
+
+"That's just what I was meaning to show to-night when I said what I
+did to the club, of the financial dependence of women; it is their
+destruction; it destroys their self-respect; it forces them to accept a
+moral companionship which they'd scorn if they dared; it forces them to
+seem to condone and uphold such things themselves; it forces them to
+be the companions and subordinates of degraded moral natures, that hold
+wives and daughters to a code which they will not apply to themselves,
+and which they seek to make void for other wives and daughters;
+it--" "You told me to go home," she said, stubbornly. "I'm not goin'! I
+make money enough to live on. I always spent it on--on things to wear;
+but--but I can live on it, an' I'm goin' to. I ain't goin' to live in
+the house with no such a man. He ain't _fit_ to live with. I won't tell
+ma an' the girls--yet; not till--"
+
+She paused, and peered toward the clock in the face of the great stone
+building across the street. "Do you think it's too late fer me t' talk
+a minute with Miss Gertrude?" she asked, with her direct gaze, again.
+"She'd let me stay there one night, I guess, n' she'd tell me--I c'd
+talk to her some."
+
+"If you won't go home," he said, slowly, "I suppose it would be best
+for you to go there, but--it is rather late. Go home for to-night, Miss
+Francis! I wish you would. Think it over to-night, please. Let me take
+you home to-night. Go to Miss Gertrude to-morrow, and talk it over." His
+tone had grown gentle and more tender than he knew. He took the hand she
+had placed on his arm in his own, and tried to turn toward her street.
+She held stubbornly back. "For my sake, to please me--because I think
+it is best--won't you go home to-night?" She looked at him again, and
+a haze came in her eyes. She did not trust herself to speak, but she
+turned toward her own street, and they walked silently down the square.
+His hand still held her own as it lay on his arm.
+
+"Thank you," he said, and pressed her fingers more firmly for an instant
+and then released them. He had taken his glove off in the hall and had
+not replaced it. When they reached the door of her father's house, she
+suddenly grasped his ungloved hand and kissed it, and ran sobbing up the
+steps and into the house without a word.
+
+"Poor girl," thought Avery, "she is not herself to-night. She has never
+respected nor loved her father much, but this was a phase of his nature
+she had not suspected before. Poor child! I hope Gertrude--" and in the
+selfishness of the love he bore for Gertrude, he allowed his thoughts
+to wander, and it did not enter his mind to place anything deeper than
+a mere emotional significance upon the conduct of the intense, tall,
+dark-eyed girl who had just left him.
+
+He did not dream that at that moment she lay face down on her bed
+sobbing as if her heart would break, and yet, that a strange little
+flutter of happiness touched her heart as she held her gloved hand
+against her flushed cheek or kissed it in the darkness. It was the hand
+Avery had held so long within his own, as it lay upon his arm. At last
+the girl drew the glove off, and going to her drawer, took out her
+finest handkerchief and lay the glove within, wrapping it softly and
+carefully. She was breathing hard, and her face was set and pained.
+At two o'clock she had fallen asleep, and under her tear-stained cheek
+there was a glove folded in a bit of soft cambric. Poor Francis King!
+The world is a sorry place for such as you, and even those who would be
+your best friends often deal the deadliest wounds. Poor Francis King!
+Has life nothing to offer you but a worn glove and a tear-stained bit
+of cambric? Is it true? Need it be true? Is there no better way? Have
+we built your house with but one door, and with no window? Smile at the
+fancies of your sleep, child; to-morrow will bring memory, reality,
+and tears. You are a woman now. Yesterday you were but an unformed,
+strong-willed girl. Poor Francis King! sleep late to-morrow, and dream
+happily if you can. Poor Francis King, to-morrow is very near!
+
+
+
+
+XI.
+
+"Gertrude!" called out her mother to the girl, as she passed the library
+door. "Gertrude! come in, your father and I wish to talk with you."
+
+"Committee meeting?" laughed Gertrude, as she took a seat beside her
+father. It had grown to be rather a joke in the family to speak of Mr.
+Avery's calls as committee meetings, and Mr. Foster had tried vainly to
+tease his daughter about it.
+
+"In my time," he would say, "we did not go a courting to get advice.
+we went for kisses. I never discussed any more profound topic with my
+sweetheart than love--and perhaps poetry and music. Sometimes, as I sit
+and listen to you two, I can't half believe that you are lovers. It's so
+perfectly absurd. You talk about everything on earth. It's a deal more
+like--why I should have looked upon that sort of thing as a species of
+committee meeting, in my day."
+
+Gertrude had laughed and said something about thinking that love ought
+to enter into and run through all the interests of life, and not be held
+merely as a thing apart. All women had a life to live. All would not
+have the love. So the first problem was one of life and its work. The
+love was only a phase of this. But her father had gone on laughing at
+her about her queer love-making.
+
+"Committee meeting?" asked she, again, as she glanced at her father,
+smiling dryly. Her mother answered first.
+
+"Yes--no--partly. Your father wanted to speak to you about--he thinks
+you should not be seen with, or have those girls--You tell her yourself,
+dear," she said, appealing to her husband. Mr. Foster was fidgeting
+about in his chair; he had not felt comfortable before. He was less so
+now, for Gertrude had turned her face full upon him, and her hand was on
+his sleeve.
+
+"'Well, there's nothing to tell, Gertrude," he said. "I guess you
+can understand it without a scene. I simply don't want to see those
+girls--that King girl and her friend--about here any more. It won't do.
+It simply won't do at all. You'll be talked about. Of course, I know it
+is all very kind of you, and all that, and that you don't mean any
+harm; but men always have drawn, and they always will draw, unpleasant
+conclusions. They may sympathize with that sort of girls, but they
+simply won't stand having their own women folks associate with them. The
+test of the respectability of a woman, is whether a man of position will
+marry her or not. A man's respectable if he's out of jail. A woman if
+she is marriageable or married. Now, unfortunately, that little Berton
+girl is neither the one nor the other, and its going to make talk if you
+are seen with her again. She must stay away from here, too."
+
+There had come a most unusual tone of protest into his voice as he went
+on, but he had looked steadily at a carved paper knife, which he held in
+his hand, and with which he cut imaginary leaves upon the table. There
+was a painful silence. Gertrude thought she did not remember having ever
+before heard her father speak so sharply. She glanced at her mother,
+but Katherine Foster had evidently made up her mind to leave this matter
+entirely in the hands of her husband.
+
+"Do you mean, papa, that you wish me to tell that child, Ettie Berton,
+not to come here any more, and that I must not befriend her?" asked
+Gertrude, in an unsteady voice.
+
+"Befriend her all you've a mind to," responded her father, heartily.
+"Certainly. Of course. But don't have her come here, and don't you be
+seen with her, nor the other one again. You can send James or Susan
+--better not send Susan though--send James with money or anything you
+want to give her. Your mother tells me you are paying the Berton girl's
+board. That's all right if you want to, but--your mother has told me the
+whole outrageous story, and that cashier ought to be shot, but--"
+
+"But instead of helping make the public opinion which would make him
+less, and Ettie more, respectable, you ask me to help along the present
+infamous order of things! Oh, papa! don't ask that of me! I have never
+willingly done anything in my life that I knew you disapproved. Don't
+ask me to help crush that child now, for I cannot. I cannot desert her
+now. Don't ask that of me, papa. Why do men--even you good men--make it
+so hard, so almost impossible for women to be kind to each other? What
+has Ettie done that such as we should hold her to account. She is a
+mere child. Fourteen years old in fact, but not over ten in feeling or
+judgment. She has been deceived by one who fully understood. She did
+not. And yet _even you_ ask me to hold her responsible! Oh, papa,
+don't!" She slipped onto her father's knee and took his face in her
+hands and kissed his forehead. She had never in her life stood against
+her father or seemed to criticise him before. It hurt her and it vexed
+him. A little frown came on his face. "Katherine," he said, turning to
+his wife, "I wish you'd make Gertrude understand this thing rationally.
+_You_ always have." Mrs. Foster glanced at her daughter and then at her
+husband. She smiled.
+
+"I always have, what dear?" she asked.
+
+"Understood these things as I do--as everyone does," said her husband.
+"You never took these freaks that Gertrude is growing into, and--"
+
+The daughter winced and sat far back on her father's knee. Her mother
+did not miss the action. She smiled at the girl, but her voice was
+steady, and less light than usual.
+
+"No, I never took freaks, as you say, but what I thought of things, or
+how I may or may not have understood them, dear, no one ever inquired,
+no one ever cared to know. That I acted like other people, and
+acquiesced in established opinions, went without saying. That was
+expected of me. That I did. Gertrude belongs to another generation,
+dear. She cannot be so colorless as we women of my time--"
+
+Her husband laughed.
+
+"Colorless, is good, by Jove! _You_ colorless indeed!" He looked
+admiringly at his wife. "Why, Katherine, you have more color and more
+sense now than any half dozen girls of this generation. Colorless
+indeed!" Mrs. Foster smiled. "Don't you think my cheerful, easy
+reflection of your own shades of thought or mind have always passed
+current as my own? Sometimes I fancy that is true, and that--it is
+easier and--pleasanter all around. But--" she paused. "It was not my
+color, my thought, my opinions, myself. It was an echo, dear; a pleasant
+echo of yourself which has so charmed you. It was not I."
+
+Gertrude felt uneasy, and as if she were lifting a curtain which had
+been long drawn. Her father turned his face towards her and then toward
+her mother.
+
+"In God's name what does all this mean?" he asked. "Are you, the
+most level-headed woman in the world, intending to uphold Gertrude in
+this--suicidal policy--her--this--absurd nonsense about that girl?"
+
+Gertrude's eyes widened. She slowly arose from his knee. The revelation
+as to her father's mental outlook was, to her more sensitive and
+developed nature, much what the one had been to Francis King that night
+at the club.
+
+"Oh, papa," she said softly. "I am so sorry for--so sorry--for us all.
+We seem so far apart, and--"
+
+"John Martin agrees with me perfectly," said her father, hotly. "I
+talked with him to-day. He--"
+
+Gertrude glanced at her mother, and there was a definite curl upon her
+lip. "Mr. Martin," she said slowly, "is not a conscience for me. He and
+I are leagues apart, papa. We--"
+
+"More's the pity," said her father, as he arose from his chair. He moved
+toward the door.
+
+"I've said my say, Gertrude. It's perfectly incomprehensible to me what
+you two are aiming at. But what I know is this: you must _do_ my way in
+this particular case, think whatever you please. You know very well I
+would not ask it except for your own good. I don't like to interfere
+with your plans, but--you must give that girl up." He spoke kindly, but
+Gertrude and her mother sat silent long after he had gone. The twilight
+had passed into darkness. Presently Katherine's voice broke the
+silence:--
+
+"Shall you float with the tide, daughter, or shall you try to swim up
+stream?" She was thinking of the first talk they had ever had on these
+subjects, nearly two years ago now, but the girl recognized the old
+question. She stood up slowly and then with quick steps came to her
+mother's side.
+
+"Don't try to swim with me, mamma. It only makes it harder for me to see
+you hurt in the struggle. Don't try to help me any more when the eddies
+come. Float, mamma; I shall swim. I shall! I shall! And while my head is
+above the waves that poor little girl shall not sink."
+
+She was stroking Katherine's hair, and her mother's hand drew her own
+down to a soft cheek.
+
+"Am I right, mother?" she asked, softly. "If you say I am right, it is
+enough. My heart will ache to seem to papa to do wrong, but I can bear
+it better than I could bear my own self-contempt. Am I right, mamma?"
+
+Her mother drew her hand to her lips, and then with a quick action she
+threw both arms about the girl and whispered in her ear: "I shall go
+back to the old way. Swim if you can, daughter. You are right. If only
+you are strong enough. That is the question. If only you are strong
+enough. I am not. I shall remain in the old way." There was a steadiness
+and calm in her voice which matched oddly enough with the fire in her
+eyes and the flush on her cheeks.
+
+"Little mother, little mother," murmured Gertrude, softly, as she
+stroked her mother's hand. Then she kissed her and left the room. "With
+her splendid spirit, that _she_ should be broken on the wheel!" the girl
+said aloud to herself, when she had reached her own room. She did not
+light the gas, but sat by the window watching the passers-by in the
+street.
+
+"Why should papa have sent me to college," she was thinking, "where I
+matched my brains and thoughts with men, if I was to stifle them later
+on, and subordinate them to brains I found no better than my own? Why
+should my conscience be developed, if it must not be used; if I must use
+as my guide the conscience of another? Why should I have a separate and
+distinct nature in all things, if I may use only that part of it which
+conforms to those who have not the same in type or kind? I will do what
+seems right to myself. I shall not desert--"
+
+She laid her cheek in her hand and sighed. A new train of thought was
+rising. It had never come to her before.
+
+"It is my father's money. He says I may send it, but I may not--it is my
+father's money. He has the right to say how it may be used, and--and--"
+(the blood was coming into her face) "I have nothing but what he gives
+me. He wants a pleasant home; he pays for it. Susan and James, and the
+rest, he hires to conduct the labor of the house. If they do not do it
+to please him--if they are not willing to--they have no right to stay,
+and then to complain. For his social life at home he has mamma and me.
+If he wants--" She was walking up and down the room now. "Have we a
+right to dictate? We have our places in _his_ home. We are not paid
+wages like James and Susan, but--but--we are given what we have; we are
+dependent. He has never refused us anything--any sum we wanted--but he
+can. It is in his power, and really we do not know but that he should.
+Perhaps we spend too much. We do not know. What can he afford? I do not
+know. What can _I_ afford?" She spread her hands out before her, palms
+up, in the darkness. She could see them by the flicker of the electric
+light in the street.
+
+"They are empty," she said, aloud, "and they are untrained, and they
+are helpless. They are a pauper's hands." She smiled a little at the
+conceit, and then, slowly: "It sounds absurd, almost funny, but it is
+true. A pauper in lace and gold! I am over twenty-two. I am as much a
+dependent and a pauper as if I were in a poorhouse. Love and kindness
+save me! They have not saved Ettie, nor Francis. When the day came they
+were compelled to yield utterly, or go. They can work, and I? I am a
+dependent. Have I a right to stand against the will and pleasure of my
+father, when by doing so I compel him to seem to sustain and support
+that which he disapproves? Have I a right to do that?"
+
+She was standing close to the window now, and she put her hot face
+against the glass. "The problem is easy enough, if all think alike--if
+one does not think at all; but now? I cannot follow my own conscience
+and my father's too. We do not think alike. Is it right that I should,
+to buy his approval and smiles, violate my own mind, and brain, and
+heart? But is it right for me to violate _his_ sense of what is right,
+while I live upon the lavish and loving bounty which he provides?"
+And so, with her developed conscience, and reason, and individuality,
+Gertrude had come to face the same problem, which, in its more brutal
+form, had resulted so sorrowfully for the two girls whom she had hoped
+to befriend. The ultimate question of individual domination of one by
+another, with the purse as the final appeal--and even this strong and
+fortunate girl wavered. "Shall I swim, after all? Have I the right to
+try?" she asked herself.
+
+
+
+
+XII.
+
+When Francis King told Mr. Avery that she could and would leave her
+father's home and live upon the money she earned, and had heretofore
+looked upon as merely a resource to save her pride, she did not take
+into consideration certain very important facts, not the least of which
+was, perhaps, that her presence at the store was not wholly a pleasant
+thing for the cashier to contemplate under existing circumstances.
+
+Francis King was not a diplomat. The cashier was not a martyr. These two
+facts, added to the girl's scornful eyes, rendered the position in the
+trimming department far less secure than she had grown to believe.
+
+So when she came to the little room which Gertrude Foster had provided
+as a temporary home for Ettie Berton, she felt that she came as a help
+and protector and not at all as a possible encumbrance.
+
+"I've had a terrible blow-out with pa," she said, bitterly. "I can't
+go home any more if I wanted to--and I don't want to. I told him what I
+thought of him, and of your--and of the kind of men that make mean laws
+they are ashamed to have their own folks know about and live by. He was
+awful mad. He said laws was none o' my business, and he guessed men knew
+best what was right an' good for women."
+
+"Of course they do," said Ettie with her ever ready acquiescence. "I
+reckon you didn't want t' deny _that,_ did you Fan? You 'n your pa must
+a' shook hands for once anyhow," she laughed. "How'd it feel? Didn't you
+like agreein' with him once?" Francis looked at the child--this pitiful
+illustration of the theory of yielding acquiescence; this legitimate
+blossom of the tree of ignorance and soft-hearted dependence; this poor
+little dwarf of individuality; this helpless echo of masculine measures,
+methods, and morals--and wondered vaguely why it was that the more
+helpless the victim, the more complete her disaster, the more certain
+was she to accept, believe in, and support the very cause and root of
+her undoing.
+
+Francis King's own mental processes were too disjointed and
+ill-formulated to enable her to express the half-formed thoughts that
+came to her. Her heart ached for her little friend to whom to-day was
+always welcome, and to whom to-morrow never appeared a possibility other
+than that it would be sunshiny, and warm, and comfortable.
+
+Francis saw a certain to-morrow which should come to Ettie, far more
+clearly than did the child herself, and seeing, sighed. Her impulse was
+to argue the case hotly with Ettie, as she had done with her father; but
+she looked at her face again, and then, as a sort of safety-valve for
+her own emotion, succinctly said: "Ettie Berton, you are the biggest
+fool I ever saw."
+
+Ettie clapped her hands.
+
+"Right you are, says Moses!" she exclaimed, laughing gleefully, "and you
+like me for it. Folks with sense like fools. Sense makes people so awful
+uncomfortable. Say, where'd you get that bird on your hat? Out 'o stock?
+Did that old mean thing make you pay full price? Goodness! how I do wish
+I could go back t' store!"
+
+"Ettie, how'd you like for me to come here an live with you? Do you
+'spose Miss Gertrude would care?"
+
+"Hurrah for Cleveland!" exclaimed Ettie, springing to her feet and
+throwing her arms about Francis. "Hurrah for Grant! Gracious, but I'm
+glad! I'm just so lonesome I had to make my teeth ache for company," she
+rattled on. "Miss Gertrude 'll be glad, too. She said she wisht I had
+somebody 't take care of me. But, gracious! I don't need that. They
+ain't nothing to do but just set still n' wait. It's the waitin' now
+that makes me so lonesome. I want t' hurry 'n get back t' the store,
+'n--"
+
+She noticed Francis's look of surprise, not unmixed with frank scorn;
+but she did not rightly interpret it.
+
+"My place ain't gone is it, Fan?" she asked, in real alarm. "He said
+he'd keep it for me."
+
+"Ettie Berton, you are the biggest fool I ever saw," said Francis,
+again, this time with a touch of hopelessness and pathos in her voice,
+and at that moment there was a rap at the door. It was one of the cash
+girls from the store. She handed Francis a note, and while Ettie and
+the visitor talked gaily of the store, Francis read and covered her
+pale face with her trembling hands. She was discharged "owing to certain
+necessary changes to be made in the trimming department." She went and
+stood by the window with her back to the two girls. She understood the
+matter perfectly, and she did not dare trust herself to speak. It could
+not be helped, she thought, and why let Ettie know that she had brought
+this disaster upon her friend, also. Francis was trying to think. She
+was raging within herself. Then it came to her that she had boldly
+asserted that she would help protect and support Ettie. Now she was
+penniless, helpless, and homeless herself. There were but two faces that
+stood out before her as the faces of those to whom she could go for help
+and counsel, and she was afraid to go to even these. She was ashamed,
+humiliated, uncertain.
+
+She supposed that Gertrude Foster could help her if she would. She had
+that vague miscomprehension of facts which makes the less fortunate look
+upon the daughters of wealth and luxury and love as possessed of a magic
+wand which they need but stretch forth to compass any end. She did not
+dream that at that very moment Gertrude Foster was revolving exactly the
+same problem in her own mind, and reaching out vainly for a solution.
+"What shall I do? what ought I to do? what can I do?" were questions
+as real and immediate to Gertrude, in the new phase of life and thought
+which had come to her, as they were to Francis in her extremity. It is
+true that the greater part of the problem in Francis's mind dealt with
+the physical needs of herself and her little friend, and with her own
+proud and fierce anger toward her father and the cashier. It is also
+true that these features touched Gertrude but lightly; but the highest
+ideals, beliefs, aspirations, and love of her soul were in conflict
+within her, and the basis of the conflict was the same with both girls.
+Each had, in following the best that was within herself, come into
+violent contact with established prejudice and prerogative, and each
+was beating her wings, the one against the bars of a gilded cage draped
+lovingly in silken threads, and the other was feeling her helplessness
+where iron and wrath unite to hold their prey.
+
+The other face that arose before Francis brought the blood back to her
+face. She had not seen him since she had kissed his hand that night, and
+she wondered what he thought of her. She felt ashamed to go to him for
+help. She had talked so confidently to him that night of her own powers,
+and of her determination that Ettie should not again live under the same
+roof, and be subject to the will of the father whom she insisted was
+a disgrace to the child. "I reckon _he_ could get me another place to
+work--in a store," she thought. "But--" She shook her head, and a fierce
+light came into her eyes. She had learned enough to know that a girl who
+had left home under the wrath of her father, would best not appeal for
+a situation under the protection and recommendation of a young gentleman
+not of her own caste or condition in life. She thought of all this and
+of what it implied, and it seemed to her that her heart would burst with
+shame and rage.
+
+Was she not a human being? Were there not more reasons than one why
+another human unit should be kind to her and help her? If she were a boy
+all this shame would be lifted from her shoulders, all these suspicions
+and repression and artificial barriers would be gone. She wondered
+if she could not get a suit of men's clothes, and so solve the whole
+trouble. No one would then question her own right of individual and
+independent action or thought. No one would then think it commendable
+for her to be a useless atom, subordinating her whole individuality to
+one man, to whose mental and moral tone she must bend her own, until
+such time as he should turn her over to some other human entity,
+whereupon she would be required to readjust all her mental and moral
+belongings to accommodate the new master. How comfortable it would be,
+she thought, to go right on year after year, growing into and out of
+herself. Expanding her own nature, and finding the woman of to-morrow
+the outcome of the girl of yesterday. She had once heard a teacher
+explain about the chameleon with its capacity to adjust itself to and
+take on the color of other objects. It floated into her mind that
+girls were expected to be like chameleons. Instead of being John King's
+daughter, with, of course, John King's ideas, status and aspirations, or
+William Jones's wife--now metamorphosed into a tepid reflex of William
+Jones himself--she thought how pleasant it would be to continue to be
+Francis King, and not feel afraid to say so. The idea fascinated her.
+Yes, she would get a suit of men's clothes, and henceforth have and feel
+the dignity of individual responsibility and development. She slipped
+out of the room and into the street. She thought she would order the
+clothes as if "for a brother just my size." She could pay for a cheap
+suit. She paused in front of a shop window, and the sight of her own
+face in a glass startled her. She groaned aloud. She knew as she looked
+that she was too handsome to pass for a man. It was a woman's face.
+Then, too, how could she live with and care for Ettie? "No, _I'll_
+have to go to _them_ for help," she said, desperately to herself, and
+turning, faced Selden Avery coming across the street. The color flew
+into her face, but she saw at a glance that he did not think of their
+last meeting--or, at least, not of its ending. "I was just wishing I
+could see you and Miss Gertrude," she said, bluntly, her courage coming
+back when he paused, recognizing that she wished to speak further with
+him than a mere greeting.
+
+"Were you?" he said, smiling. "Our thoughts were half-way the same then,
+for I was wishing to see her, too."
+
+She thought how pleasant and soft his voice was, and she tried to modify
+the tones of her own.
+
+"I was goin't' ask you--her--what to do about--about something," she
+said, falteringly.
+
+"So was I," he smiled back, showing his perfect teeth. "She will have to
+be very, very wise to advise us both, will she not? Shall we go to her
+now? And together? Perhaps our united wisdom may solve both your problem
+and mine. Three people ought to be three times as wise as one, oughtn't
+they?"
+
+
+
+
+XIII.
+
+"When Gertrude came forward to meet Selden Avery and Francis King, she
+felt the disapproving eyes of her father fixed upon her. It was a new
+and a painful sensation. It made her greeting less free and frank than
+usual, and both Avery and Francis felt without being able to analyze it.
+
+"She don't like me to be with him," thought Francis, and felt humiliated
+and hurt.
+
+"Surely Gertrude cannot doubt me," was Avery's mental comment, and a
+sore spot in his heart, left by a comment made at the club touching
+Gertrude's friendship for this same tall, fiery girl at his side, made
+itself felt again. John Martin exchanged glances with Gertrude's father.
+Avery saw, and seeing, resented what he believed to be its meaning.
+
+The three men bowed rather stiffly to each other. Francis felt that she
+was, somehow, to blame. She wished that she had not come. She longed
+to go, but did not know what to say nor how to start. The situation was
+awkward for all. Gertrude wished for and yet dreaded the entrance of her
+mother.
+
+Avery felt ashamed to explain, but he began as if speaking to Gertrude
+and ended with a look of challenge at the two men facing him. "I chanced
+to meet Miss King in the street and as both of us stood in need of
+advice from you," he was trying to smile unconcernedly, "we came up the
+avenue together."
+
+There was a distinct look of displeasure and disapproval upon Mr.
+Foster's face, while John Martin took scant pains to conceal his
+disgust. He, also, had heard, and repeated, the club gossip to
+Gertrude's father.
+
+"If good advice is what you want particularly," said Mr. Foster, slowly,
+"I don't know but that I might accommodate you. I hardly think Gertrude
+is in a position to--to--"
+
+The bell rang sharply and in an instant the little cash girl from the
+store rushed in gasping for breath.
+
+"Come quick! quick! Ettie is killed! She fell down stairs and then--oh,
+something _awful_ happened! I don't know what it was. The doctor is
+there. He sent me here, 'cause Ettie cried and called for you!" She was
+looking at Gertrude, who started toward the door.
+
+"Go back and tell the doctor that Miss Foster cannot come," said her
+father, rising.
+
+"Certainly not, I should hope," remarked John Martin under his breath;
+"the most preposterous idea!" Gertrude paused. She was looking at her
+father with appeal in her face. Then her eyes fell upon the tense lips
+and piercing gaze of Francis King who, half way to the street door, had
+turned and was looking first from one to the other.
+
+"Papa," said Gertrude, "don't say that. I must go. It is right that I
+should, and I must." Then with outstretched hands, "I want to go, papa!
+I need to. Don't--"
+
+"You will do nothing of the kind, Gertrude. It is outrageous. What
+business have you got with that kind of girls? I _asked_ you to stop
+having them come here, and I told you to let them alone. I am perfectly
+disgusted with Avery, here, for--" He had thought Francis was gone. The
+drapery where she had turned to hear what Gertrude would say hid her
+from him. "_With that kind of girls!_" was ringing in her ears. "I hope
+when you are married _that_ is not the sort of society he is going to
+surround you with. It--" Avery saw for the first time what the trouble
+was. He stepped quickly to Gertrude's side and slipped one arm about
+her. Then he took the hand she still held toward her father.
+
+"My wife shall have her own choice. She is as capable as I to choose.
+I shall not interfere. She shall not find me a master, but a comrade.
+Gertrude is her own judge and my adviser. That is all I ask, and it is
+all I assume for myself as her husband--when that time comes," he added,
+with her hand to his lips.
+
+Mrs. Foster entered attired for the street. The unhappy face of Francis
+King with wide eyes staring at Gertrude met her gaze. She had heard what
+went before. "Get your hat, Gertrude," she said. "I will go with you. It
+might take too long to get a carriage. Francis, come with me; Gertrude
+will follow us. Come with her, my son," she said, to Selden Avery, and
+a spasm of happiness swept over his face. She had never called him that
+before. He stooped and kissed her, and there were tears in the young
+man's eyes as Mrs. Foster led Francis King away.
+
+"I suppose it was all my fault to begin with," said John Martin, when
+the door had closed behind them. "It all started from that visit to the
+Spillinis. The only way to keep the girls of this age in--" he was going
+to say "in their place," but he changed to 'where they belong,' "is not
+to let them find out the facts of life. Charity and religion did well
+enough to appease the consciences of women before they had colleges, and
+all that. I didn't tell you so at the time, but I always did think it
+was a mistake to send Gertrude to a college where she could measure her
+wits with men. She'll never give it up. She don't know where to stop."
+
+Mr. Foster lighted a cigar--a thing he seldom did in the drawing-room.
+He handed one to John Martin.
+
+"I guess you're right, John," he said, slowly. "She can't seem to see
+that graduation day ended all that. It was Katherine's idea, sending her
+there, though. I wanted her to go to Vassar or some girl's school like
+that. I don't know what to make of Katherine lately; when I come to
+think of it, I don't know what to make of her all along. She seems to
+have laid this plan from the first, college and all; but I never saw
+it. Sometimes I'm afraid--sometimes I almost think--" He tapped his
+forehead and shook his head, and John Martin nodded contemplatively, and
+said: "I shouldn't wonder if you are right, Fred. Too much study is a
+dangerous thing for women. The structure of their brains won't stand
+it. It is sad, very sad;" and they smoked in sympathetic silence, while
+James had hastened below stairs to assure Susan that he thought he'd
+catch himself allowing his sweetheart or wife to demean herself and
+disgrace him by having anything to do with a person in the position of
+Ettie Berton. And Susan had little doubt that James was quite right,
+albeit Susan felt moderately sure that in a contest of wits--after the
+happy day--she could be depended upon to get her own way by hook or by
+crook, and Susan had no vast fund of scruple to allay as to method or
+motive. Deception was not wholly out of Susan's line. Its necessity did
+not disturb her slumbers.
+
+
+
+
+XIV.
+
+Some one had sent for Ettie's father. They told him that she was
+dying, and he had come at once. Mr. King had gone with him. The latter
+gentleman did not much approve of his colleague's soft-heartedness in
+going. He did not know where his own daughter was, and he did not care.
+She had faced him in her fiery way, and angered him beyond endurance the
+morning after she had learned of the awful bill which he had not really
+originated, but which he had induced Mr. Berton to present, at the
+earnest behest of a social lion whose wont it was to roar mightily in
+the interest of virtue, but who was at the present moment engaged in
+lobbying vigorously in the interest of vice.
+
+When Francis entered the sick-room with Mrs. Foster, and found the two
+men there, she gave one glance at the pallid, unconscious figure on the
+bed, and then demanded, fiercely: "Where is the cashier? Why didn't you
+bring him and--and the rest of you who help make laws to keep him where
+he is, an'--an' to put Ettie where she is? Why didn't y' bring _all_ of
+your kind that helped along the job?"
+
+Mrs. Foster had been bending over the child on the bed. She turned.
+
+"Don't, Francis," she said, trying to draw the girl away. She was
+standing before the two men, who were near the window. "Don't, Francis.
+That can do no good. They did not intend--" "No'm," began Berton,
+awkwardly; "no'm, I didn't once think o' _my_ girl, n--" He glanced
+uneasily at his colleague and then at the face on the bed.
+
+"Or you would never have wanted such a law passed, I am sure," said
+Katherine.
+
+"No'm, I wouldn't," he said, doggedly, not looking at his colleague.
+
+"Don't tell me!" exclaimed Francis. "You don't none of you care for her.
+He only cares because it is his girl an' disgraces _him_. What did he
+do? Care for her? No, he drove her off. That shows who he's a-carin'
+for. He ain't sorry because it hurts or murders her. He never tried to
+make it easy for her an' say he was a lot more to blame an'--an'--a
+big sight worse every way than she was. He's a-howling now about bein'
+sorry; but he's only sorry for himself. He'd a let her starve--an' so'd
+_he_," she said, pointing to her father. She was trembling with rage
+and excitement. "I hope there is a hell! I jest hope there is! I'll be
+willin' to go to it myself jest t' see--"
+
+The door opened softly and Gertrude entered, and behind her stood Selden
+Avery.
+
+"That kind of girls" floated anew into Francis's brain, and the sting of
+the words she had heard Gertrude's father utter drove her on. "I wish
+to God, every man that ever lived could be torn to pieces an'--an' put
+under Ettie's feet. They wouldn't be fit for her to walk on--none of
+'em! She never did no harm on purpose ner when she understood; an'
+men--men jest love to be mean!"
+
+She felt the utter inadequacy of her words, and a great wave of feeling
+and a sense of baffled resentment swept over her, and she burst into
+tears. Gertrude tried to draw her out of the room. At the door she
+sobbed: "Even _her_ father's jest like the rest, only--only he says it
+easier. He--"
+
+"Francis, Francis," said Gertrude, almost sternly, when they were
+outside the sickroom. "You must not act so. It does no good, and--and
+you are partly wrong, besides. If--"
+
+"I didn't mean _him_," said the girl, with her handkerchief to her eyes.
+"I didn't mean _him._ I know what he thinks about it. I heard him talk
+one night at the club. He talked square, an' I reckon he is square. But
+_I_ wouldn't take no chances. I wouldn't marry the Angel Gabriel an'
+give him a chance to lord it over me!"
+
+Gertrude smiled in spite of herself, and glanced within through the open
+door. There was a movement towards where the sick girl lay. "If you go
+in, you must be quiet," she said to Francis, and entered. Ettie had been
+stirring uneasily. She opened her great blue eyes, and when she saw the
+faces about her, began to sob aloud.
+
+"Don't let pa scold me. I'll do his way. I'll do--anything anybody
+wants. I like to. The store--" She gave a great shriek of agony. She
+had tried to move and fell back in a convulsion. She was only partly
+conscious of her suffering, but the sight was terrible enough to
+sympathetic hearts, and there was but one pair of dry eyes in the room.
+The same beady, stern, hard glitter held its place in the eyes of Mr.
+King.
+
+"Serves her right," he was thinking. "And a mighty good lesson. Bringin'
+disgrace on a good man's name!"
+
+The tenacity with which Mr. King adhered to the belief in, and
+solicitude for, a good name, would have been touching had it not been
+noticeable to the least observant that his theory was, that the custody
+of that desirable belonging was vested entirely in the female members
+of a family. Nothing short of the most austere morals could preserve the
+family 'scutcheon if he was contemplating one side. Nothing short of a
+long-continued, open, varied, and obtrusive dishonesty and profligacy of
+a male member could even dull its lustre. It was a comfortable code for
+a part of its adherents.
+
+Had his poor, colorless, inane wife ever dared to deviate from the
+beaten path of social observance, Mr. King would have talked about and
+felt that "his honor" was tarnished. Were he to follow far less strictly
+the code, he would not only be sure that his own honor was intact,
+but if any one were to suggest to him the contrary, or that he was
+compromising her honor, he would have looked upon that person as lacking
+in what he was pleased to call "common horse-sense." He was in no manner
+a hypocrite. His sincerity was undoubted. He followed the beaten track.
+Was it not the masculine reason and logic of the ages, and was not
+that final? Was not all other reason and logic merely a spurious
+emotionalism? morbid? unwholesome? irrational?
+
+No one would gainsay that unless it were a lunatic or a woman, which
+was much the same thing--and since the opinion of neither of these was
+valuable, why discuss or waste time with them? That was Mr. King's point
+of view, and he was of the opinion that he had a pretty good voting
+majority with him, and a voting majority was the measure of value and
+ethics with Representative King--when the voting majority was on his
+side.
+
+When the last awful agony came to poor little Ettie Berton, and she
+yielded up, in pathetic terror and reluctant despair, the life which
+had been moulded for her with such a result almost as inevitable as the
+death itself, a wave of tenderness and remorse swept over her father. He
+buried his face in the pillow beside the poor, pretty, weak, white face
+that would win favor and praise by its cheerful ready acquiescence no
+more, and wept aloud. This impressed Representative King as reasonable
+enough, under all the circumstances, but when Ettie's father intimated
+later to Francis that he had been to blame, and that, perhaps, after
+all, Ettie _was_ only the legitimate result of her training and the
+social and legal conditions which he had helped to make and sustain,
+Representative King curled his lip scornfully and remarked that in his
+opinion Tom Berton never could be relied on to be anything but a damned
+fool? In the long run. He was a splendid "starter." Always opened up
+well in any line; but unless someone else held the reins after that the
+devil would be to pay and no mistake.
+
+Francis heard; and, hearing, shut tight her lips and with her
+tear-swollen eyes upon the face of her dead friend, swore anew that to
+be disgraced by the presence of a father like that was more than she
+could bear. She could work or she could die; but there was nothing on
+this earth, she felt, that would be so impossible, so disgraceful, as
+for her to ever again acknowledge his authority as her guide.
+
+"Come home with me to-night, Francis," said Mrs. Foster. "We will think
+of a plan--"
+
+"I'm goin' to stay right here," said the girl, with a sob and a shiver;
+for she had all the horror and fear of the dead that is common to her
+type and her inexperience. "I'm goin' to stay right here. I can't go
+home, an' I'm discharged at the store. Ettie told me her rent was paid
+for this month. I'll take her place here an'--an' try to find another
+place to work."
+
+Mrs. Foster realized that to stay in that room would fill the girl with
+terror, but she felt, too, that she understood why Francis would not
+go home with her. "That kind of girls" from Mr. Foster's lips had stung
+this fierce, sensitive creature to the quick. A week ago she would
+have been glad indeed to accept Katherine Foster's offer. Now she would
+prefer even this chamber of death, where the odors made her ill, and
+the thoughts and imaginings would insure to her sleepless nights of
+unreasoning fear. Her father did not ask her to go home. Representative
+King believed in representing. Was not his family a unit? And was he not
+the figure which stood for it? It had never been his custom to ask
+the members of his household to do things. He told them that he wanted
+certain lines of action fallowed. That was enough. The thought and the
+will of that ideal unit, "the family," vested in the person of Mr. King
+and he proposed to represent it in all things.
+
+If by any perverse and unaccountable mental process there was developed
+a personality other than and different from his own, Representative King
+did not propose to be disturbed in his home-life--as he persisted in
+calling the portion of his existence where he was able to hold the
+iron hand of power ever upon the throat of submission--to the extent of
+having such unseemly personality near him.
+
+In her present mood he did not want Francis at home. Representative King
+was a staunch advocate of harmony and unity in the family life. He was
+of opinion that where timidity and dependence say "yes" to all that
+power suggests, that there dwelt unity and harmony. That is to say, he
+held to this idea where it touched the sexes and their relation to
+each other in what he designated an ideal domestic life. In all other
+relations he held far otherwise--unless he chanced to be on the side
+of power and had a fair voting majority. Representative King was an
+enthusiastic admirer of submission--for other people. He thought that
+there was nothing like self-denial to develop the character and beauty
+of a nature. It is true that his scorn was deep when he contemplated the
+fact that John Berton "had no head of his own," but then, John Berton
+was a man, and a man ought to have some self-respect. He ought to
+develop his powers and come to something definite. A definite woman
+was a horror. Her attractiveness depended upon her vagueness, so
+Representative King thought; and if a large voting majority was not with
+him in open expression, he felt reasonably sure that he could depend
+upon them in secret session, so to speak. Representative King was not
+a linguist, but he could read between the social and legal lines very
+cleverly indeed, and finer lines of thought than these were not for
+Representative King.
+
+And so he did not ask Francis to go home. "When she gets ready to go my
+way and says so, she can come," he thought.
+
+"When that dress gets shabby and she's a little hungry, she'll conclude
+that my way is good enough for her." He smiled at the vision of the
+future "unity and harmony" which should thus be ushered into his home by
+means of a little judiciously applied discipline, and Francis took her
+dead friend's place as a lodger and tried to think, between her spasms
+of loneliness and fears, what she should do on the morrow.
+
+
+
+
+XV.
+
+"Francis told me once at the Guild that she can make delicious bread and
+pastry," said Gertrude, as they drove home. "I wonder if we could not
+start her in a little shop of her own. She has the energy and vim to
+build herself a business. I doubt if she will every marry--with her
+experience one can hardly wonder--and there is a long life before her.
+Her salvation will be work; a career, success."
+
+"A career in a pastry shop seems droll enough," smiled her mother,
+"but--"
+
+"I think I might influence the club to take a good deal of her stuff.
+We've a miserable pastry cook now," said Avery. "That would help her
+to get a start, and the start is always the hard part, I suppose, in a
+thing like that."
+
+"That would be a splendid chance. If the members liked her things,
+perhaps they would get their wives to patronize her, too," said
+Gertrude, gaily. "I'm so glad you thought of that, but then you always
+think of the right thing," she added, tenderly. They all three laughed a
+little, and Avery slipped his arm about her.
+
+"Do I?" he asked in a voice tremulous with happiness. "Do I, Darling?
+I'm so glad you said that, for I've just been thinking that--that I
+don't want to go back to Albany without you, and--and the new session
+begins in ten weeks. Darling, will you go with me? May she, my mother?"
+he asked, catching Mrs. Foster's hand in his own. The two young people
+were facing her. She sat alone on the back seat of the closed carriage.
+The street lights were beginning to blossom and flicker. The rays fell
+upon the mother's face as they drove. Her eyes were closed, and tears
+were on her cheeks.
+
+"Forgive me, mother," said Avery, tenderly. "Forgive me! You have gone
+through so much to-day. I should have waited; but--but I love her so. I
+need her so--I need her to help me think right. Can you understand?"
+
+Mrs. Foster moved to one side and held out both arms to her daughter.
+
+"Sit by me," she said, huskily, and Gertrude gathered her in her young,
+strong arms.
+
+"Can I understand?" half sobbed Katherine from her daughter's shoulder.
+"Can I understand? Oh, I do! I do! and I am so happy for you both; but
+she--she is _my_ daughter, and it is so hard to let her go--even to you!
+It is so hard!"
+
+Gertrude could not speak. She tried to look at her lover, but tears
+filled her eyes. She was holding her mother's hand to her lips.
+
+"Dear little mamma," she whispered; "dear little mamma, I shall never go
+if it makes you unhappy--never, if it breaks my heart. But mamma, I love
+you more because I love him; and--"
+
+"I know, I know," said Katherine, trying to struggle out of her
+heartache which held back and beyond itself a tender joy for these two.
+"But love is so selfish. I _am_ glad. I am glad for you both--but--oh,
+my daughter, I love you, _I_ love you!" she said, and choked down a sob
+to smile in the girl's eyes.
+
+Mr. Foster was waiting for them in the library. They were late. He had
+been thinking.
+
+"Well, I'm tremendously glad you're back," he said brightly, kissing
+his wife, and then he took Gertrude in his arms. "Sweetheart," he said,
+smiling down into her eyes, "if I seemed harsh to-day, I'm sorry. I only
+did it because I thought it was for your own good. You know that."
+
+"Why, papa," she said, with her cheek against his own; "of course I
+know. Of course I understand. We all did. You don't mind if we did not
+see your way? You--"
+
+"The girl is dead, dear," said Mrs. Foster, touching her husband's arm,
+"and--let us not talk of that now, to--to these, our children. They want
+your--they want to ask--they are going to be married in ten weeks?"
+
+"The dickens!" exclaimed her father, and held Gertrude at arm's length.
+"Is that so, Sweetheart?" There was a twinkle in his eyes, and he lifted
+her chin with one finger and then kissed her. "The dickens! Well, all
+I've got to say is, I'm sorry for old Martin and the rest of us," and
+he grasped Selden Avery's hand. "I hope you'll give up that legislative
+foolishness pretty soon and come back to town and live with civilized
+people in a civilized way. It'll be horribly lonely in New York without
+Gertrude, but--oh, well, its nature's way. We're all a lot of robbers.
+I stole this little woman away from her father, and I'm an unrepentent
+thief yet, am I not?" and he kissed his wife with the air of a man who
+feels that life is well worth living, no matter what its penalties, so
+long as she might be not the least of them.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Pray You, Sir, Whose Daughter?, by 
+Helen H. Gardener
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+<?xml version="1.0" encoding="iso-8859-1"?>
+
+<!DOCTYPE html
+PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN"
+"http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd" >
+
+<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" lang="en">
+<head>
+<title>
+Pray You, Sir, Whose Daughter?, by Helen H. Gardener
+</title>
+<style type="text/css">
+    <!--
+    body { margin:5%; background:#faebd0; text-align:justify}
+    P { text-indent: 1em; margin-top: .25em; margin-bottom: .25em; }
+    H1,H2,H3,H4,H5,H6 { text-align: center; margin-left: 15%; margin-right: 15%; }
+    hr  { width: 50%; text-align: center;}
+    .foot { margin-left: 20%; margin-right: 20%; text-align: justify; text-indent: -3em; font-size: 90%; }
+    blockquote {font-size: 97%; font-style: italic; margin-left: 10%; margin-right: 10%;}
+    .mynote    {background-color: #DDE; color: #000; padding: .5em; margin-left: 10%; margin-right: 10%; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 95%;}
+    .toc       { margin-left: 10%; margin-bottom: .75em;}
+    .toc2      { margin-left: 20%;}
+    div.fig    { display:block; margin:0 auto; text-align:center; }
+    div.middle { margin-left: 20%; margin-right: 20%; text-align: justify; }
+    .figleft   {float: left; margin-left: 0%; margin-right: 1%;}
+    .figright  {float: right; margin-right: 0%; margin-left: 1%;}
+    .pagenum   {display:inline; font-size: 100%; font-style:normal;
+               margin: 0; padding: 0; position: absolute; right: 1%;
+               text-align: right;}
+    .side      { float: left; font-size: 75%; width: 25%; padding-left: 0.8em;
+               border-left: dashed thin; text-align: left;
+               text-indent: 0; font-weight: bold; font-style: italic;
+               font-weight: bold; color: black; background: #eeeeee; border: solid 1px;}
+    p.pfirst, p.noindent {text-indent: 0}
+    span.dropcap         { float: left; margin: 0 0.1em 0 0; line-height: 1 }
+    pre        { font-style: italic; font-size: 90%; margin-left: 10%;}
+    -->
+</style>
+</head>
+<body>
+
+
+<pre>
+
+Project Gutenberg's Pray You, Sir, Whose Daughter?, by Helen H. Gardener
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Pray You, Sir, Whose Daughter?
+
+Author: Helen H. Gardener
+
+Release Date: March 16, 2013 [EBook #37355]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK PRAY YOU, SIR, WHOSE DAUGHTER? ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by David Widger
+
+
+
+
+
+</pre>
+
+<div style="height: 8em;">
+<br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />
+</div>
+<h1>
+PRAY YOU, SIR, WHOSE DAUGHTER?
+</h1>
+<h2>
+By Helen H. Gardener
+</h2>
+<h4>
+R. F. Fenno &amp; Company <br /><br /> 9 and 11 East 16th Street <br /><br />
+New York <br /><br /> 1892
+</h4>
+<p>
+<br /><br />
+</p>
+<hr />
+<p>
+<br /><br />
+</p>
+<p>
+I saw a woman sleeping. In her sleep she dreampt Life stood before her,
+and held in each hand a gift&mdash;in the one Love, in the other Freedom.
+And she said to the woman, "Choose!"
+</p>
+<p>
+And the woman waited long; and she said: "Freedom!" And Life said, "Thou
+hast well chosen. If thou hadst said, 'Love,' I would have given thee that
+thou didst ask for; and I would have gone from thee, and returned to thee
+no more. Now, the day will come when I shall return. In that day I shall
+bear both gifts in one hand." I heard the woman laugh in her sleep.
+</p>
+<p>
+Olive Schreener's Dreams.
+</p>
+<h3>
+DEDICATED
+</h3>
+<h4>
+With the love and admiration of the Author, <br /><br /> To Her Husband
+</h4>
+<p>
+Who is ever at once her first, most severe, and most sympathetic critic,
+whose encouragement and interest in her work never flags; whose abiding
+belief in human rights, without sex limitations, and in equality of
+opportunity leaves scant room in his great soul to harbor patience with
+sex domination in a land which boasts of freedom for all, and embodies its
+symbol of Liberty in the form of the only legally disqualified and
+unrepresented class to be found upon its shores.
+</p>
+<p>
+<br /><br />
+</p>
+<hr />
+<p>
+<br /><br />
+</p>
+<h3>
+Contents
+</h3>
+<p class="toc">
+<a href="#link2H_PREF"> PREFACE. </a>
+</p>
+<p class="toc">
+<a href="#link2H_4_0002"> <b>PRAY YOU, SIR, WHOSE DAUGHTER?</b> </a>
+</p>
+<p class="toc">
+<a href="#link2H_4_0003"> I </a>
+</p>
+<p class="toc">
+<a href="#link2H_4_0004"> II. </a>
+</p>
+<p class="toc">
+<a href="#link2H_4_0005"> III. </a>
+</p>
+<p class="toc">
+<a href="#link2H_4_0006"> IV. </a>
+</p>
+<p class="toc">
+<a href="#link2H_4_0007"> V. </a>
+</p>
+<p class="toc">
+<a href="#link2H_4_0008"> VI </a>
+</p>
+<p class="toc">
+<a href="#link2H_4_0009"> VII. </a>
+</p>
+<p class="toc">
+<a href="#link2H_4_0010"> VIII. </a>
+</p>
+<p class="toc">
+<a href="#link2H_4_0011"> IX. </a>
+</p>
+<p class="toc">
+<a href="#link2H_4_0012"> X. </a>
+</p>
+<p class="toc">
+<a href="#link2H_4_0013"> XI. </a>
+</p>
+<p class="toc">
+<a href="#link2H_4_0014"> XII. </a>
+</p>
+<p class="toc">
+<a href="#link2H_4_0015"> XIII. </a>
+</p>
+<p class="toc">
+<a href="#link2H_4_0016"> XIV. </a>
+</p>
+<p class="toc">
+<a href="#link2H_4_0017"> XV. </a>
+</p>
+<p>
+<a name="link2H_PREF" id="link2H_PREF">
+<!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+</p>
+<div style="height: 4em;">
+<br /><br /><br /><br />
+</div>
+<h2>
+PREFACE.
+</h2>
+<p class="pfirst"><span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">I</span>n the following story the writer shows us what poverty and dependence are
+in their revolting outward aspects, as well as in their crippling effects
+on all the tender sentiments of the human soul. Whilst the many suffer for
+want of the decencies of life, the few have no knowledge of such
+conditions.
+</p>
+<p>
+They require the poor to keep clean, where water by landlords is
+considered a luxury; to keep their garments whole, where they have naught
+but rags to stitch together, twice and thrice worn threadbare. The
+improvidence of the poor as a valid excuse for ignorance, poverty, and
+vice, is as inadequate as is the providence of the rich, for their virtue,
+luxury, and power. The artificial conditions of society are based on false
+theories of government, religion, and morals, and not upon the decrees of
+a God.
+</p>
+<p>
+In this little volume we have a picture, too, of what the world would call
+a happy family, in which a naturally strong, honest woman is shrivelled
+into a mere echo of her husband, and the popular sentiment of the class to
+which she belongs. The daughter having been educated in a college with
+young men, and tasted of the tree of knowledge, and, like the Gods,
+knowing good and evil, can no longer square her life by opinions she has
+outgrown; hence with her parents there is friction, struggle, open revolt,
+though conscientious and respectful withal.
+</p>
+<p>
+Three girls belonging to different classes in society; each illustrates
+the false philosophy on which woman's character is based, and each in a
+different way, in the supreme moment of her life, shows the necessity of
+self-reliance and self-support.
+</p>
+<p>
+As the wrongs of society can be more deeply impressed on a large class of
+readers in the form of fiction than by essays, sermons, or the facts of
+science, I hail with pleasure all such attempts by the young writers of
+our day. The slave has had his novelist and poet, the farmer his, the
+victims of ignorance and poverty theirs, but up to this time the
+refinements of cruelty suffered by intelligent, educated women, have never
+been painted in glowing colors, so that the living picture could be seen
+and understood. It is easy to rouse attention to the grosser forms of
+suffering and injustice, but the humiliations of spirit are not so easily
+described and appreciated.
+</p>
+<p>
+A class of earnest reformers have, for the last fifty years, in the press,
+the pulpit, and on the platform, with essays, speeches, and constitutional
+arguments before legislative assemblies, demanded the complete
+emancipation of women from the political, religious, and social bondage
+she now endures; but as yet few see clearly the need of larger freedom,
+and the many maintain a stolid indifference to the demand.
+</p>
+<p>
+I have long waited and watched for some woman to arise to do for her sex
+what Mrs. Stowe did for the black race in "Uncle Tom's Cabin," a book that
+did more to rouse the national conscience than all the glowing appeals and
+constitutional arguments that agitated our people during half a century.
+If, from an objective point of view, a writer could thus eloquently
+portray the sorrows of a subject race, how much more graphically should
+some woman describe the degradation of sex.
+</p>
+<p>
+In Helen Gardener's stories, I see the promise, in the near future, of
+such a work of fiction, that shall paint the awful facts of woman's
+position in living colors that all must see and feel. The civil and canon
+law, state and church alike, make the mothers of the race a helpless,
+ostracised class, pariahs of a corrupt civilization. In view of woman's
+multiplied wrongs, my heart oft echoes the Russian poet who said: "God has
+forgotten where he hid the key to woman's emancipation." Those who know
+the sad facts of woman's life, so carefully veiled from society at large,
+will not consider the pictures in this story overdrawn.
+</p>
+<p>
+The shallow and thoughtless may know nothing of their existence, while the
+helpless victims, not being able to trace the causes of their misery, are
+in no position to state their wrongs themselves.
+</p>
+<p>
+Nevertheless all the author describes in this sad story, and worse still,
+is realized in everyday life, and the dark shadows dim the sunshine in
+every household.
+</p>
+<p>
+The apathy of the public to the wrongs of woman is clearly seen at this
+hour, in propositions now under consideration in the Legislature of New
+York. Though two infamous bills have been laid before select committees,
+one to legalize prostitution, and one to lower the age of consent, the
+people have been alike ignorant and indifferent to these measures. When it
+was proposed to take a fragment of Central Park for a race course, a great
+public meeting of protest was called at once, and hundreds of men hastened
+to Albany to defeat the measure.
+</p>
+<p>
+But the proposed invasion of the personal rights of woman, and the
+wholesale desecration of childhood has scarce created a ripple on the
+surface of society. The many do not know what laws their rulers are
+making, and the few do not care, so long as they do not feel the iron
+teeth of the law in their own flesh. Not one father in the House or Senate
+would willingly have his wife, sister, or daughter subject to these
+infamous bills proposed for the daughters of the people. Alas! for the
+degradation of sex, even in this republic. When one may barter away all
+that is precious to pure and innocent childhood at the age of ten years,
+you may as well talk of a girl's safety with wild beasts in the tangled
+forests of Africa, as in the present civilizations of England and America,
+the leading nations on the globe.
+</p>
+<p>
+Some critics say that every one knows and condemns these facts in our
+social life, and that we do not need fiction to intensify the public
+disgust. Others say, Why call the attention of the young and the innocent
+to the existence of evils they should never know. The majority of people
+do not watch legislative proceedings.
+</p>
+<p>
+To keep our sons and daughters innocent, we must warn them of the dangers
+that beset their path on every side.
+</p>
+<p>
+Ignorance under no circumstances ensures safety. Honor protected by
+knowledge, is safer than innocence protected by ignorance.
+</p>
+<p>
+A few brave women are laboring to-day to secure for their less capable,
+less thoughtful, less imaginative sisters, a recognition of a true
+womanhood based on individual rights. There is just one remedy for the
+social complications based on sex, and that is equality for woman in every
+relation in life.
+</p>
+<p>
+Men must learn to respect her as an equal factor in civilization, and she
+must learn to respect herself as mother of the race. Womanhood is the
+great primal fact of her existence; marriage and maternity, its incidents.
+</p>
+<p>
+This story shows that the very traits of character which society (whose
+opinions are made and modified by men) considers most important and
+charming in woman to ensure her success in social life, are the very
+traits that ultimately lead to her failure.
+</p>
+<p>
+Self-effacement, self-distrust, dependence and desire to please,
+compliance, deference to the judgment and will of another, are what make
+young women, in the opinion of these believers in sex domination, most
+agreeable; but these are the very traits that lead to her ruin.
+</p>
+<p>
+The danger of such training is well illustrated in the sad end of Ettie
+Berton. When the trials and temptations of life come, then each one must
+decide for herself, and hold in her own hands the reins of action.
+Educated women of the passing generation chafe under the old order of
+things, but, like Mrs. Foster in the present volume, are not strong enough
+to swim up stream. But girls like Gertrude, who in the college curriculum
+have measured their powers and capacities with strong young men and found
+themselves their equals, have outgrown this superstition of divinely
+ordained sex domination. The divine rights of kings, nobles, popes, and
+bishops have long been questioned, and now that of sex is under
+consideration and from the signs of the times, with all other forms of
+class and caste, it is destined soon to pass away.
+</p>
+<p>
+Elizabeth Cady Stanton
+</p>
+<p>
+<a name="link2H_4_0002" id="link2H_4_0002">
+<!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+</p>
+<div style="height: 4em;">
+<br /><br /><br /><br />
+</div>
+<h2>
+PRAY YOU, SIR, WHOSE DAUGHTER?
+</h2>
+<p>
+<a name="link2H_4_0003" id="link2H_4_0003">
+<!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+</p>
+<div style="height: 4em;">
+<br /><br /><br /><br />
+</div>
+<h2>
+I
+</h2>
+<p class="pfirst"><span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">T</span>o say that Mrs. Foster was cruel, that she lacked sympathy with the
+unfortunate, or that she was selfish, would be to state only the dark half
+of a truism that has a wider application than class or sex could give it;
+a truism whose boundary lines, indeed, are set by nothing short of the
+ignorance of human beings hedged in by prejudice and handicapped by lack
+of imagination. So when she sat, with dainty folded hands whose jeweled
+softness found fitting background on the crimson velvet of her trailing
+gown, and announced that she could endure everything associated with, and
+felt deep sympathy for, the poor if it were not for the besetting sin of
+uncleanliness that found its home almost invariably where poverty dwelt,
+it would be unjust to pronounce her hard-hearted or base.
+</p>
+<p>
+"It is all nonsense to say that the poor need be so dirty," she announced,
+as she held her splendid feather fan in one hand and caressed the dainty
+tips of the white plumes with the tips of fingers only less dainty and
+white.
+</p>
+<p>
+"I have rarely ever seen a really poor man, woman, or child who was at the
+same time really clean looking in person, and as to clothes&mdash;"
+</p>
+<p>
+She broke off with an impatient and disgusted little shrug, as if to say&mdash;what
+was quite true&mdash;that even the touch of properly descriptive words
+held for her more soilure than she cared to bear contact with.
+</p>
+<p>
+John Martin laughed. Then he essayed to banter his hostess, addressing his
+remarks meanwhile to her daughter.
+</p>
+<p>
+"One could not imagine your mamma a victim of poverty and hunger, much
+less of dirt, Miss Gertrude," he began slowly; "but even that sumptuous
+velvet gown of hers would grow to look more or less&mdash;let us say&mdash;rusty,
+in time, I fear, if it were the only costume she possessed, and she were
+obliged to eat, cook, wash, iron, sew, and market in it."
+</p>
+<p>
+The two ladies laughed merrily at the droll suggestion, and Miss Gertrude
+pursed up her lips and developed a decided squint in her eyes as she
+turned them upon the folds of her mother's robe. Then she took up Mr.
+Martin's description where the laugh had broken in upon it.
+</p>
+<p>
+"Too true, too true," she drawled; "and if she dusted the furniture a week
+or so with that fan, I'm afraid it would lose more or less of its&mdash;gloss.
+Mamma quite prides herself upon the delicate peach-fuzz-bloom, so to
+speak, of those feathers. Just look at them!" The girl reached over and
+took the fan from her mother's lap. She spread the fine plumes to their
+fullest capacity, and held them under the rays of the brass lamp that
+stood near their guest. Then she made a flourish with it in the direction
+of the music stand, as if she were intent upon whisking the last speck of
+dust from the sheets of Tannhauser that lay on its top A little cry of
+alarm and protest escaped Mrs. Foster's lips and she stretched oat her
+hand to rescue the beloved fan.
+</p>
+<p>
+"Gertrude! how can you?" She settled back comfortably against the cushions
+of the low divan with her rescued treasure once more waving in gentle
+gracefulness before her.
+</p>
+<p>
+"Oh, no," she protested. "Of course one could not work or live constantly
+in one or two gowns and look fresh, but one could look and be clean and&mdash;and
+whole. A patch is not pretty I admit, but it is a decided improvement upon
+a bare elbow."
+</p>
+<p>
+"I don't agree with you at all," smiled her guest; "I don't believe I ever
+saw a patch in all my life that would be an improvement upon&mdash;upon&mdash;"
+He glanced at the lovely round white arms before him, and all three
+laughed. Mrs. Foster thought of how many Russian baths and massage
+treatments had tended to give the exquisite curve and tint to her arm.
+</p>
+<p>
+"Then beside," smiled Mr. Martin, "a rent or hole may be an immediate
+accident, liable to happen to the best of us. A patch looks like
+premeditated poverty." Gertrude laughed brightly, but her mother did not
+appear to have heard. She reverted to the previous insinuation.
+</p>
+<p>
+"Oh, well; that is not fair! You know what I mean. I'm talking of elbows
+that burst or wear out&mdash;not about those that never were intended to
+be in. Then, besides, it is not the elbow I object to; it is the hole one
+sees it through. <i>It</i> tells a tale of shiftlessness and personal
+untidiness that saps all sympathy for the poverty that compelled the long
+wearing of the garment."
+</p>
+<p>
+"Why, my dear Mrs. Foster," said Martin, slowly, "I wonder if you have any
+idea of a grade of poverty that simply can't be either whole or clean. Did&mdash;?"
+</p>
+<p>
+"I'll give up the whole, but I won't give in on the clean. I can easily
+see how a woman could be too tired, too ill, or too busy to mend a
+garment; I can fancy her not knowing how to sew, or not having thread,
+needles, and patches; but, surely, surely, Mr. Martin, no one living is
+too poor to keep clean. Water is free, and it doesn't take long to take a
+bath. Besides&mdash;"
+</p>
+<p>
+Gertrude looked at her mother with a smile. Then she said with her
+sarcastic little drawl again:&mdash;
+</p>
+<p>
+"Russian, or Turkish?"
+</p>
+<p>
+"Well, but fun' and nonsense aside, Gertrude," said her mother, "a plain
+hot bath at home would make a new creature out of half the wretches one
+sees or reads of, and&mdash;"
+</p>
+<p>
+"Porcelain lined bath-tub, hot and cold water furnished at all hours.
+Bath-room adjoining each sleeping apartment," laughed Mr. Martin. "What a
+delightful idea you have of abject poverty, Mrs. Foster. I do wish Fred
+could have heard that last remark of yours. I went with his clerk one day
+to collect rents down in Mulberry Street. He had the collection of the
+rents for the Feedour estate on his hands&mdash;"
+</p>
+<p>
+"What's that about the rents of the Feedour estate?" inquired the head of
+the house, extending his hand to their guest as he entered. Mrs. Foster
+put out her hand and her husband touched the tips of her fingers to his
+lips, while Gertrude slipped her arm through her father's and drew him to
+a seat beside her. Her eyes were dancing, and she showed a double row of
+the whitest of teeth.
+</p>
+<p>
+"Oh, Mr. Martin was just explaining to mamma how your clerk collects rent
+for the porcelain bath-tubs in the Feedour property down in Mulberry
+Street. Mamma thinks that bath-rooms should be free&mdash;hot and cold
+water, and all convenient appointments."
+</p>
+<p>
+Fred Foster looked at their guest for a moment, and then both men burst
+into a hearty laugh.
+</p>
+<p>
+"I don't see anything to laugh at," protested Mrs. Foster. "Unless you are
+guying me for thinking Mr. Martin in earnest about the tubs being rented.
+I suppose, of course, the bath-rooms go with the apartments, and one rent
+covers the whole of it. In which case, I still insist that there is no
+reason why the poor can't be clean, and if they have only one suit of
+clothes, they can wash them out at night and have them dry next morning."
+</p>
+<p>
+The men laughed again.
+</p>
+<p>
+"Gertrude, has your mamma read her essay yet before the Ladies' Artistic
+and Ethical Club on the 'Self-Inflicted Sorrows of the Poor?'" asked Mr.
+Foster, pinching his daughter's chin, and allowing a chuckle of humorous
+derision to escape him as he glanced at their guest.
+</p>
+<p>
+"No," said the girl, a trifle uneasily; "Lizzie Feedour read last time.
+Mamma's is next, and she has read her paper to me. It is just as good as
+it can be. Better than half the essays used to be at college, not
+excepting Mr. Holt's prize thesis on economics. I wish the poor people
+could hear it. She speaks very kindly of their faults even while
+criticising them. You&mdash;"
+</p>
+<p>
+"Don't visit the tenement houses of the Feedour estate, dear, until after
+you read your paper to the club," laughed her husband, "or your essay
+won't take half so well. College theses and cold facts are not likely to
+be more than third cousins; eh, Martin? I'm sure the part on cleanliness
+would be easier for her to manage in discussion before she visited the
+Spillini family, for example."
+</p>
+<p>
+"Which one is that, Fred?" asked Mr. Foster.
+</p>
+<p>
+Martin, a droll twinkle in his eye. "The family of eight, with Irish
+mother and Italian father, who live in one room and take boarders?"
+</p>
+<p>
+There was a little explosive "oh" of protest from Gertrude, while her
+mother laughed delightedly.
+</p>
+<p>
+"Mr. Martin, you are so perfectly absurd. Why didn't you say that the room
+was only ten by fifteen feet and had but one window!"
+</p>
+<p>
+"Because I don't think it is quite so big as that, and there is no outside
+window at all," said he, quite gravely. "And their only bath-tub for the
+entire crowd is a small tin basin also used to wash dishes in."
+</p>
+<p>
+"W-h-a-t!" exclaimed Mrs. Foster, as if she were beginning to suspect
+their guest's sanity, for she recognized that his mood had changed from
+one of banter.
+</p>
+<p>
+The portière was drawn aside, and other guests announced. As Mrs. Foster
+swept forward to meet them, Gertrude grasped her father's arm and looked
+into his eyes with something very like terror in her own. "Papa," she said
+hastily, in an intense undertone; "Papa, is he in earnest? Do the Feedour
+girls collect rent from such awful poverty as that? Do eight human beings
+eat and sleep&mdash;live&mdash;in one room anywhere in a Christian
+country? Does&mdash;?"
+</p>
+<p>
+Her father took both of her hands in his own for a moment and looked
+steadily into her face.
+</p>
+<p>
+"Hundreds of them, darling," he said, gently. "Don't stare at Miss Feedour
+that way. Go speak to her. She is looking toward us, and your mother has
+left her with Martin quite long enough. He is in an ugly humor to-night.
+Go&mdash;no, come," he said, slipping her hand in his arm and drawing her
+forward through the long rooms to where the group of guests were greeting
+each other with that easy familiarity which told of frequent intercourse
+and community of interests and social information.
+</p>
+<p>
+<a name="link2H_4_0004" id="link2H_4_0004">
+<!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+</p>
+<div style="height: 4em;">
+<br /><br /><br /><br />
+</div>
+<h2>
+II.
+</h2>
+<p class="pfirst"><span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">T</span>wo hours later Gertrude found herself near a low window seat upon which
+sat John Martin. She could not remember when he had not been her father's
+closest friend, and she had no idea why his moods had changed so of late.
+He was much less free and fatherly with her. She wondered now if he
+despised her because she knew so little of the real woes of a real world
+about her, while she, in common with those of her station, sighed so
+heavily over the needs of a more distant or less repulsive human swarm.
+</p>
+<p>
+"Will you take me to see the Spillini family some day soon, Mr. Martin,"
+she asked, seating herself by his side. "Papa said that you were telling
+the truth&mdash;were not joking as I thought at first."
+</p>
+<p>
+Her eyes were following the graceful movements of Lizzie Feedour, as that
+young lady turned the leaves of a handsome volume that lay on the table
+before her, and a gentleman with whom she was discussing its merits and
+defects.
+</p>
+<p>
+"I don't believe the call would be a pleasure on either side," said Mr.
+Martin, brusquely, "unless we sent word the day before and had some of the
+family moved out and a chair taken in."
+</p>
+<p>
+The girl turned her eyes slowly upon him, but she did not speak. The color
+began to climb into his face and dye the very roots of his hair. She
+wondered why. Her own face was rather paler than usual and her eyes were
+very serious.
+</p>
+<p>
+"You don't want to take me," she said. "I wonder why men always try to
+keep girls from knowing things&mdash;from learning of the world as it is&mdash;and
+then blame them for their ignorance! You naturally think I am a very
+silly, light girl, but&mdash;"
+</p>
+<p>
+A great panic overtook John Martin's heart. He could hardly keep back the
+tears. He felt the blood rush to his face again, but he did not know just
+what he said.
+</p>
+<p>
+"I do not&mdash;I do not! You are&mdash;I&mdash;I&mdash;should hate to be
+the one to introduce you to such a view of life. I was an old fool to talk
+as I did this evening. I&mdash;"
+</p>
+<p>
+"Oh, that is it!" exclaimed Gertrude, relieved. "You found me ignorant,
+and content because I was ignorant, and you regret that you have struck a
+chord&mdash;a serious chord&mdash;where only make-believe or merry ones
+were ever struck between us before."
+</p>
+<p>
+John Martin fidgeted.
+</p>
+<p>
+"No, it is not that I would like to strike the first serious chord for you&mdash;in
+your heart, Gertrude."
+</p>
+<p>
+He had called her Gertrude for years. Indeed the Miss upon his lips was of
+very recent date, but there was a meaning in the name just now as he spoke
+it that gave the girl a distinct shock. She felt that he was covering
+retreat in one direction by a mendacious advance in another. She arose
+suddenly.
+</p>
+<p>
+"Lizzie Feedour is looking her best tonight," she said. "She grows
+handsomer every day."
+</p>
+<p>
+She had moved forward a step, but he caught the hand that hung by her
+side. She faced him with a look of mingled protest and surprise in her
+face; but when her eyes met his, she understood.
+</p>
+<p>
+"Gertrude, darling!" was all he could say. This time the blood dyed her
+face and a mist blinded her for a moment. She remembered feeling glad that
+her back was turned to everyone but him, and that the window drapery hid
+his face from the others, for the intensity of appeal touched with the
+faintest shimmer of happiness and hope told so plain a story that she
+felt, rather than thought, how absurd it would look to anyone else. She
+did not realize why it seemed less absurd to her. She drew her hand away
+and the color died out of his face. Her own was burning. She had turned to
+leave the room when his disappointed face swam before her eyes again. She
+put out her hand quickly as if bidding him good-night and drew him toward
+the door. He moved beside her as in a dream.
+</p>
+<p>
+"After you take me to see the Spillini family," she said, trying to appear
+natural to any eyes that might be upon her, "we&mdash;I&mdash;" They had
+reached the portière. She drew it aside and he stepped beyond.
+</p>
+<p>
+"There is no companionship between two people who look upon life so
+unequally. Those who know all about the world that contains the Spillini
+family and those who know nothing of such a world are very far apart in
+thought and in development There is no mental comradeship. I feel very far
+from my father to-night for the first time&mdash;mamma and I. I have
+looked at her all the evening in wonder&mdash;and at him. I wonder how
+they have contrived to live so far apart. How could he help sharing his
+views and knowledge of life with her, if he thinks her and wishes her to
+be his real companion and comrade. I could not live that way."
+</p>
+<p>
+She seemed to have forgotten the newer, nearer question, in contemplating
+the problem that had startled her earlier in the evening. John Martin
+thought it was all a bit of kind-hearted acting to cover his retreat. He
+dropped her hand. A man-servant was holding his coat. He thrust his arms
+in and took his hat.
+</p>
+<p>
+"Will you take me to see the Spillini family <i>tomorrow?</i>" asked a
+soft voice from the portière. A great wave of joy rushed over John Martin.
+He did not know why.
+</p>
+<p>
+"Yes," he said, in a tone that was so distinctly happy that the
+man-servant stared. The folds of the portière fell together and John
+Martin passed out onto Fifth Avenue, in an ecstasy.
+</p>
+<p>
+He is willing to share his knowledge of life with me&mdash;of life as he
+sees and knows it&mdash;she thought, as she lay awake that night. He does
+not wish to live on one plane and have me live on another. That looks like
+real love. Poor mamma! Poor papa! How far apart they are. To him life is a
+real thing. He knows its meaning and what it holds. She only knows a shell
+that is furbished up and polished to attract the eye of children. It is as
+if he were reading a book to her in a language he understood and she did
+not. The sound would be its entire message to her, while he gathered in
+and kept to himself all the meaning of the words&mdash;the force of the
+thoughts. How can they bear such isolation. How can they? she thought with
+a new feeling of passionate protest that mingled with her dreams.
+</p>
+<p>
+<a name="link2H_4_0005" id="link2H_4_0005">
+<!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+</p>
+<div style="height: 4em;">
+<br /><br /><br /><br />
+</div>
+<h2>
+III.
+</h2>
+<p class="pfirst"><span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">S</span>ure an' I'd like to die meself if dyin' wasn't so costly," remarked Mrs.
+Spillini, as she gazed with tear-stained eyes at the little body that
+occupied the only chair in the dismal room. "Do the best we kin, buryin'
+the baby is goin' to cost more than we made all winter out o' all three
+boarders. Havin' the baby cost a dreadful lot altogether, an' now it's
+dyin's a dreadful pull agin."
+</p>
+<p>
+Gertrude Foster opened her Russian leather purse and Mrs. Spillini's eyes
+brightened shrewdly. There was no need for the hesitancy and choice of
+words that gave the young girl so much care and pain. Familiarity with all
+the mean and gross of life from childhood until one is the mother of six
+living and four dead children, does not leave the finest edge of sentiment
+and pride upon the poverty-cursed victims of fate.
+</p>
+<p>
+"If you would allow me to leave a mere trifle of money for you to use for
+the baby, I don't&mdash;it is only&mdash;" began Gertrude; but the ready
+hand had reached out for the money and a quick "Thanky mum; much obliged"
+had ended the transaction.
+</p>
+<p>
+"I shall not tell mamma <i>that"</i>, thought Gertrude, and she did not
+look at John Martin. It was her first glimpse into a grade of life to
+which all things, even birth and death, take on a strictly commercial
+aspect; where not only the edge of sentiment is dulled by dire necessity,
+but where the sentiment itself is buried utterly beneath the incrustations
+of an ignorance that is too dumb and abject to learn, and a poverty that
+is too insistent to recognize its own ignorance and degradation.
+</p>
+<p>
+"Won't you set down?" inquired Mrs. Spillini, as with a sudden movement
+she slid the small corpse onto the floor under the edge of the table. "I'd
+a' ast you before, but&mdash;"
+</p>
+<p>
+"O, don't!" exclaimed the girl; but before her natural impulse to stoop
+and gather up the small bundle had found action possible, John Martin had
+placed it on the table.
+</p>
+<p>
+"Oh, Lord; don't!" exclaimed the woman, in sudden dismay. "The boarders'd
+kick if they was to see it <i>there</i>. Boarders is different from the
+family. We could ate affen the table afther, but boarders&mdash;boarders'd
+kick."
+</p>
+<p>
+"Could&mdash;do you think of anything else we could do for you?" inquired
+Gertrude, faintly, as she held open the door and tried to think she was
+not dizzy and sick from the dreadful, polluted air, and the shock of the
+revelation, with all that it implied, before her.
+</p>
+<p>
+Four dirty faces, and as many ragged bodies, were too close to her for
+comfort. There was a vile stew cooking on the stove. The air was heavy and
+foul with it Gertrude distinctly felt the greasy moisture on her kid
+gloves as they touched each other.
+</p>
+<p>
+"No, I don't know's they's anything <i>more</i> you can do," replied the
+passive, hopeless wreck of what it was almost sacrilege to call womanhood.
+"I don't know's they's anything more you could <i>do</i> unless you could
+let the boarders come in now. They ain't got but a little over ten minutes
+to eat in an' dinner's ready," she replied, as she lifted the pot of
+steaming stuff into the middle of the table and laid two tin plates, a
+large knife and a bunch of iron forks and spoons beside it.
+</p>
+<p>
+"Turn that chair to the wall," she added sharply to one of the children,
+who hastened to obey the command. "They'll <i>all</i> have to stand up to
+it this time. I ain't a goin' to shift that baby round no more till it's
+buried, now that I <i>kin</i> bury it. Take this side of the table, Pete.
+I don't feel like eatin.' You kin have my place 'n the ole man ain't here.
+Let go of that tin cup, you trillin' young one. All the coffee they is, is
+in that. Have a drink, Mike?" she asked, passing the coveted cup to the
+second boarder. Gertrude was half-way down the dark hallway, and John
+Martin held her arm firmly lest she step into some unseen trap or broken
+place in the floor.
+</p>
+<p>
+When they reached the street door she turned to him with wide eyes.
+</p>
+<p>
+"Great God," she moaned, "and people go to church and pray and thank God&mdash;and
+collect rent from such as they! Men offer premiums to mothers and fathers
+for large families of children&mdash;to be brought up like that? In a
+world where that is possible! Oh, I think it is wicked, wicked, wicked, to
+allow it&mdash;any of it&mdash;all of it! How can you?"
+</p>
+<p>
+John Martin looked hopeless and helpless.
+</p>
+<p>
+"I don't," he said, in pathetic self-defense, feeling somehow that the
+blame was personal.
+</p>
+<p>
+"Oh, I don't mean you!" she exclaimed, almost impatiently. "I mean all who
+know it&mdash;who have known and understood it all along. How could men
+allow it? How dared they? And to think of encouraging such people to marry&mdash;to
+bring into a life like that such swarms of helpless children. Oh, the sin
+and shame and outrage of it!"
+</p>
+<p>
+John Martin was dazed that she should look upon it as she did. He was
+surprised that she spoke so openly. He did not fully comprehend the power
+and force of real conviction and feeling overtaken in a sincere and
+fearlessly frank nature by such a knowledge for the first time.
+</p>
+<p>
+"I should not have brought you here," he said, feebly, as they entered the
+waiting carriage which her mother had insisted she should take if she
+would go "slumming," as she had expressed it.
+</p>
+<p>
+She turned an indignant face upon him.
+</p>
+<p>
+"Why?" she demanded.
+</p>
+<p>
+He tried to say something about a shock to her nerves, and such sights and
+knowledge being not for women.
+</p>
+<p>
+"I had begun to feel that he respected me&mdash;believed in me&mdash;wanted,
+in truth and not merely in name, to share life with me," she thought, "but
+he does not: it is all a sham. He wants someone who shall <i>not</i> share
+life with him&mdash;not even his mental life."
+</p>
+<p>
+"You would come here with papa, would you not?" she asked, presently. "You
+would talk over, look at, think of the problems of life with him,"&mdash;her
+voice began to tremble.
+</p>
+<p>
+"Certainly," he said, "but that is different. It&mdash;"
+</p>
+<p>
+"Yes, it is different; quite different. You love papa, and it would be a
+pain to you to keep your mental books locked up from him. You respect
+papa, and you would not be able to live a life of pretense with him. You&mdash;"
+</p>
+<p>
+"Gertrude! Oh, darling! I love you. I love you. You know that," he said,
+grasp ing both her hands and covering them with kisses. She snatched them
+away, and covered her face with them to hide the tears which were a
+surprise and shock to herself.
+</p>
+<p>
+"I should not have taken her there," he thought. "I'm a great fool."
+</p>
+<p>
+He did not at all comprehend the girl's point of view, and she resented
+his. He could not imagine why, and her twenty years of inexperience in
+handling such a view of life as had suddenly grown up within her, made her
+unable to express quite fully why she did resent his assumption that she
+should not be allowed to use her heart or brain beyond the limits set for
+their exercise by conventional theory. She could not express in words why
+she felt insulted and outraged in her self-respect that he should assume
+that life was and should be led by her, upon a distinctly different and
+narrower plane than his own. She knew that she could not accept his
+explanation, that it was his intense love that wished to shield her from
+knowledge of all that was ugly&mdash;of all the deeper and sadder meanings
+of human experience; but she felt unequal to making him understand by any
+words at her command how far from her idea of an exalted love such an
+assumption was.
+</p>
+<p>
+That he should sincerely believe that as a matter of course much that was
+and should be quite common in his own life should be kept from, covered
+up, blurred into indistinction to her, came to her with a shock too sudden
+and heavy for words. She had built an exalted ideal of absolute mental
+companionship between those who loved. She had always thought that one day
+she should pass through the portals of some vast building by the side of a
+husband to whom all within was new as it would be to her. She had fancied
+that neither spoke; that both read the tablets of architecture&mdash;and
+of human legend on every face&mdash;so nearly alike that by a glance of
+the eye she could say to him, "I know what you are thinking of all this.
+It stirs such or such a memory. It strikes the chord that holds these
+thoughts or those." But she read as plainly now that this man who thought
+he loved her, whom she had grown to feel she might one day love, had no
+such conception of a union of lives. To him marriage would mean a physical
+possession of a toy more or less valuable, more or less to be cherished or
+to be set under a glass case, whenever his real life, his real thoughts,
+his deeper self were stirred. These were to be kept for men&mdash;his
+mentally developed equals. She understood full well that if she could have
+said this to him he would have been shocked, would have resented such a
+contemptuous interpretation of what he truly believed to be a wholly
+respectful love, offered upon wholly respectful terms. But to her, it
+seemed the mere tossing down of a filbert to a pretty kitten, that it
+might amuse him for a few moments with its graceful antics. When he tired
+of the kitten, or bethought him of the serious duties of life, he could
+turn the key and count on finding the amusing little creature to play with
+again next day in case he cared to relax himself with a sight of its
+gambols. She resented such a view of the value of her life. She was
+humiliated and indignant. The perfectly apparent lack of comprehension on
+his part of any lapse of respect in attitude toward her, the entire
+unconsciousness of the insult to her whole nature, in his assumption of a
+divine right of individual growth and development to which she had no
+claim, stung her beyond all power of speech. The very fact that he had no
+comprehension of the affront himself, added to it its utterly hopeless
+feature. The love of a man offered on such terms is an insult, she said,
+over and over to herself; but aloud she said nothing.
+</p>
+<p>
+She had heard, vaguely, through her tumult of feeling, his terms of
+endearment, his appeals to her tenderness and&mdash;alas! unfortunately
+for him&mdash;his apologies for having taken her to such a place. She
+became distinctly aware of these latter first and it steadied her. They
+had reached Washington Square.
+</p>
+<p>
+"Yes, that revelation in Mulberry Street was a horrible shock to me," she
+said, looking at him for the first time since they had entered the
+carriage; "but, do you know, I think there are more shocking things than
+even that done in the name of love every day&mdash;things as heartless and
+offensively uncomprehending of what is fine and true in life as that
+wretched woman's conduct with the lifeless form of her baby."
+</p>
+<p>
+He recognized a hard ring in her voice, but her eyes looked kind and
+gentle.
+</p>
+<p>
+"How do you mean?" he asked, touching her hand as it lay on her empty
+purse in her lap.
+</p>
+<p>
+"I don't believe I could ever make you understand what I mean, we are so
+hopelessly far apart," she said, a little sadly. "That an explanation is
+necessary&mdash;that is the hopeless part. That that poor woman did not
+comprehend that her conduct and callousness were shocking&mdash;<i>that</i>
+was the hopeless part. To make you understand what I mean would be like
+making her understand all the hundreds of awful things that her conduct
+meant to us. If it is not in one's nature to comprehend without words,
+then words are useless."
+</p>
+<p>
+His vehement protests stirred her sympathy again.
+</p>
+<p>
+"You say that love brings people near together. Do you know I am beginning
+to think that nothing could be a greater calamity than that? Drawn
+together by a love that rests on a physical basis for those who refuse to
+allow it root in a common sympathy and a community of thought it must fail
+sooner or later. A humbled acceptance of the crumbs of her husband's life,
+or a resentful endurance of it, may result from the accursed faithfulness
+or the pitiful dependence of wives, but surely&mdash;surely no greater
+calamity could befall her and no worse fate lie in wait for him."
+</p>
+<p>
+Her lover stared at her, pained and puzzled. When they reached her door he
+grasped her hand.
+</p>
+<p>
+"I thought you loved me last night, and I went away in an ecstasy of hope.
+Today&mdash;"
+</p>
+<p>
+"Perhaps I do love you," she said; "but I do not respect you, because you
+do not respect me." He made a quick sound of dissent, but she checked him.
+"You do not respect womanhood; you only patronize women&mdash;you only
+patronize me. I could not give you a right to do that for life. Good-bye.
+Don't come in this time. Wait. Let us both think."
+</p>
+<p>
+"Let us both think," he repeated, as he started down the street. "Think!
+Think what? I had no idea that Gertrude would be so utterly unreasonable.
+It is a girl's whim. She'll get over it, but it is deucedly uncomfortable
+while it lasts."
+</p>
+<p>
+"Mamma," said Gertrude, when she reached her mother's pretty room on the
+third floor. "Mamma, do you suppose if a girl really and truly loved a man
+that she would stop to think whether he had a high or a low estimate of
+womanhood?"
+</p>
+<p>
+The girl's mother looked up startled. She was quite familiar with what she
+had always termed the "superhumanly aged remarks" of her daughter, but the
+new turn they had taken surprised her.
+</p>
+<p>
+"I don't believe she would, Gertrude. Why? Are you imagining yourself in
+love with some man who is not chivalrous toward women?" Mrs. Foster smiled
+at the mere idea of her daughter caring much for any man. She thought she
+had observed her too closely to make a mistake in the matter.
+</p>
+<p>
+Gertrude evaded the first question.
+</p>
+<p>
+"I once heard a very brilliant man say&mdash;what I did not then
+understand&mdash;that chivalry was always the prelude to imposition. I
+believe I don't care very especially for chivalry. Fair play is better,
+don't you think so?" She did not pause for a reply, but began taking off
+her long gloves.
+</p>
+<p>
+"Which would you like best from papa, flattery or square-toed, honest
+truth?"
+</p>
+<p>
+Her mother laughed.
+</p>
+<p>
+"Gertrude, you are perfectly ridiculous. The institution of marriage, as
+now established, wouldn't hang together ten minutes if your square-toed,
+honest truth, as you call it, were to be tried between husbands and wives.
+Most wives are frightened nearly to death for fear they will become
+acquainted with the truth some day. They don't want it. They were not&mdash;built
+for it." Gertrude began to move about the room impatiently. Her mother
+smiled at her and went on: "Don't you look at it that way? No? Well, you
+are young yet. Wait until you've been married three years&mdash;"
+</p>
+<p>
+The girl turned upon her with an indignant face. Then suddenly she threw
+her arms about her mother's neck.
+</p>
+<p>
+"Poor mamma, poor mamma," she said. "Didn't you find out for three years
+<i>after?</i> How did you bear it? I should have committed suicide. I&mdash;"
+</p>
+<p>
+"Oh, no you wouldn't!" said her mother, with a bitter little inflection.
+"They all talk that way. Girls all feel so, if they know enough to feel at
+all&mdash;to think at all. They rage and wear out their nerves&mdash;as
+you are doing now, heaven knows why&mdash;and the beloved husband calls a
+doctor and buys sweets and travels with the precious invalid, and never
+once suspects that he is at the bottom of the whole trouble. It never
+dawns upon him that what she is dying for is a real and loyal
+companionship, such as she had fondly dreamed of, and not at all for sea
+air. It doesn't enter his mind that she feels humiliated because she knows
+that a great part of his life is a sealed book to her, and that he wishes
+to keep it so."
+</p>
+<p>
+She paused, and her daughter stroked her cheek. This was indeed a
+revelation to the girl. She had been wholly deceived by her mother's gay
+manner all these years. She was taking herself sharply to task now.
+</p>
+<p>
+"But by and by when she succeeds in killing all her self-respect; when she
+makes up her mind that the case is hopeless, and that she must expect
+absolutely no frankness in life beyond the limits of conventional usage
+prescribed for purblind babies; after she arrives at the point where she
+discovers that her happiness is a pretty fiction built on air foundation&mdash;well,
+daughter, after that she&mdash;she strives to murder all that is in her
+beyond and above the petty simpleton she passes for&mdash;and she succeeds
+fairly well, doesn't she?"
+</p>
+<p>
+There was a cynical smile on her lips, and she made an elaborate bow to
+her daughter.
+</p>
+<p>
+"Oh, mamma, I beg your pardon!" exclaimed the girl, almost frightened. "I
+truly beg your pardon! If&mdash;you&mdash;I&mdash;"
+</p>
+<p>
+Her mother looked steadily out of the window. Then she said, slowly, "How
+did you come to find all this out <i>before</i> you were married, child?
+Have I not done a mother's duty by you in keeping you in ignorance, so far
+as I could, of all the struggles and facts of life&mdash;of&mdash;"
+</p>
+<p>
+The bitter tone was in her voice again. Gertrude was hurt by it, it was so
+full of self-reproach mingled with self-contempt. She slipped her arm
+about her mother's waist.
+</p>
+<p>
+"Don't, mamma," she said. "Don't blame yourself like that. I'm sure you
+have always done the best possible&mdash;the&mdash;"
+</p>
+<p>
+Her mother laughed, but the note was not pleasant.
+</p>
+<p>
+"Yes, I always did the lady-like thing,&mdash;nothing. I floated with the
+tide. Take my advice, daughter,&mdash;float. If you don't, you'll only
+tire yourself trying to swim against a tide that is too strong for you and&mdash;and
+nothing will come of it. Nothing at all." The girl began to protest with
+the self-confidence of youth, but her mother went on. She had taken the
+bit in her teeth to-day and meant to run the whole race.
+</p>
+<p>
+"Do you suppose I did not know about the Spillini family? About the
+thousands of Spillini families? Do you suppose I did not know that the
+rent of ten such families&mdash;their whole earnings for a year&mdash;would
+be spent on&mdash;on a pretty inlaid prayer-book like this?" She tapped
+the jeweled cross and turned it over on her lap. The girl's eyes were wide
+and almost fear-filled as she studied her handsome care-free mother in her
+new mood.
+</p>
+<p>
+"Did you really suppose I did not know that this gem on the top of the
+cross is dyed with the life-blood of some poor wretch, and that this one
+represents the price of the honor of a starving girl?" She shivered, and
+the girl drew back. "Did you fancy me as ignorant and as&mdash;happy&mdash;as
+I have talked? Don't you know that it is the sole duty of a well-bred
+woman to be ignorant&mdash;and happy? Otherwise she is morbid!" She
+pronounced the word affectedly, and then laughed a bitter little laugh.
+</p>
+<p>
+"Don't, mamma," said the girl, again. "I quite understand now, quite&mdash;"
+She laid her head on her mother's bosom and was silent. Presently she felt
+a tear drop on her hair. She put her hand up to her mother's cheek and
+stroked it.
+</p>
+<p>
+"The game went against you, didn't it, mamma?" she said softly. "And you
+were not to blame." She felt a little shiver run over her mother's frame
+and a sob crushed back bravely that hurt her like a knife. Presently two
+hands lifted the girl's face.
+</p>
+<p>
+"You don't despise me, daughter? In my position the price of a woman's
+peace is the price of her own self-respect. I did not lose the game. I
+gave it up!"
+</p>
+<p>
+Gertrude kissed her on eyes and lips. "Poor mamma, poor mamma," she said
+softly, "I wonder if I shall do the same!" For the first time since she
+entered the room, the daughter appeared to appeal for, rather than to
+offer, sympathy and strength. Her mother was quick to respond.
+</p>
+<p>
+"If you never learn to love anyone very much, daughter, you may hope to
+keep your self-respect. If you do you will sell it all&mdash;for his. And&mdash;and&mdash;"
+</p>
+<p>
+"Lose both at last?" asked the girl, hoarsely. Katherine Foster closed her
+eyes for a moment to shut out her daughter's face.
+</p>
+<p>
+"Will you ever have had his?" she asked, with her eyes still closed. "Do
+men ever truly respect their dupes or their inferiors? Do you truly
+respect anyone to whom you are willing to deny truth, honor, dignity? Is
+it respect, or only a tender, pitying love we offer an intellectual
+cripple&mdash;one whose mental life we know to be, and desire to keep,
+distinctly below our own? Do&mdash;" She opened her eyes and they rested
+on an onyx clock. She laughed. "Come, daughter," she said, "it is time to
+dress for the Historical Club's annual dinner. You know I am one of the
+guests of honor to-day. They honor me so truly that I am not permitted to
+join the club or be ranked as a useful member at all. My work they accept&mdash;flatter
+me by praising in a lofty way; but I can have no status with them as an
+historian&mdash;I am a woman!"
+</p>
+<p>
+Gertrude sprang to her feet. Her eyes flashed fire.
+</p>
+<p>
+"Don't go! I wouldn't allow them to&mdash;" The door opened softly. Mr.
+Foster's face appeared.
+</p>
+<p>
+"Why, dearie, aren't you ready for the Historical Club? I wouldn't have
+you late for anything. You know I, as the vice-president, am to respond to
+the toast on, 'Woman: the highest creation, and God's dearest gift to
+mankind.' It wouldn't look well if you were not there."
+</p>
+<p>
+"No, dear," she said, without glancing at Gertrude. "It would not look
+well. I'll be ready in a minute. Will you help me, Gertrude?"
+</p>
+<p>
+"Yes," said the girl, and her deft fingers flew at the task. When the door
+closed behind her mother and the carriage rolled away, she threw herself
+face down on the bed and ground her teeth. "Shall I float, or try to swim
+up stream?" she said, to herself. "Will either one pay for what it will
+cost? Shall&mdash;"
+</p>
+<p>
+"Miss Gertrude, dinner is served," said the maid; and she went to the
+table alone.
+</p>
+<p>
+"To think that a visit to the Spillini family should have led to all
+this," she thought, and felt that life, as it had been, was over for her.
+</p>
+<p>
+Aloud she said:&mdash;
+</p>
+<p>
+"James, the berries, please, and then you may go."
+</p>
+<p>
+And James told Susan that in his opinion the man that got Miss Gertrude
+was going to get the sweetest, simplest, yieldingest girl he ever saw
+except one, and Susan vowed she could not guess who that one was.
+</p>
+<p>
+But apparently James did not wholly believe her, for he essayed to
+sportively poke her under the chin with an index finger that very
+evidently had seen better days prior to having come into violent contact
+with a base-ball, which, having a mind and a curve of its own, had
+incidentally imparted an eccentric crook to the unfortunate member.
+</p>
+<p>
+"Don't you dast t'touch me with that old pot-hook, er I'll scream,"
+exclaimed Susan, dodging the caress. "I don't see no sense in a feller
+gettin' hisself all broke up that a way," and Susan, from the opposite
+side of the butler's table, glanced admiringly at her own shapely hand,
+albeit the wrist might have impressed fastidious taste as of too robust
+proportions, and the fingers have suggested less of flexibility than is
+desirable.
+</p>
+<p>
+But to James the hand was perfect, and Susan, feeling her power, did not
+scruple to use it with brutal directness. She had that shivering dislike
+for deformity which, is possessed by the physically perfect, and she took
+it as a private grievance that James should have taken the liberty to
+break one of his fingers without her knowledge and consent. Until he had
+met her, James had carried his distorted member as a badge of honor. No
+warrior had worn more proudly his battle scars. For, to James, to be a
+catcher in a base-ball club was honor enough for one man, and he had never
+dreamed of a loftier ambition. He had grown to keep that mutilated finger
+ever to the fore as a retired general might carry an empty sleeve. It gave
+distinction and told of brave and lofty achievement, so James thought.
+</p>
+<p>
+Susan had modified his pride in the dislocated digit, but he had not yet
+learned to keep it always in the background. It had several times before
+interfered with his love-making, and James was humble.
+</p>
+<p>
+"Oh, now, Susie, don't you be so hard on that there old base-ball finger!
+I didn't know it was a-going to touch your lovely dimple," and he held the
+offending member behind his back, as he slowly circled around the table
+towards the haughty Susan. "By gum! I b'lieve I left a mark on your chin.
+Lemme see." She thought she understood the ruse, but when he kissed her
+she pretended deep indignation and flounced out of the room, but the look
+on her face caused James to drop his left eyelid over a twinkling orb and
+shake his sides with satisfaction as he removed the dishes after Miss
+Gertrude had withdrawn from the dining-room.
+</p>
+<p>
+<a name="link2H_4_0006" id="link2H_4_0006">
+<!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+</p>
+<div style="height: 4em;">
+<br /><br /><br /><br />
+</div>
+<h2>
+IV.
+</h2>
+<p class="pfirst"><span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">T</span>he visit to the Spillini family had, indeed, led to strange complications
+and far-reaching results. No one who had known young Seldon Avery and his
+social life would ever have suspected him, or any member of his set, of a
+desire to take part in what, by their club friends or favorite reviews,
+was usually alluded to as the "dirty pool of politics." For the past
+decade political advancement, at least in New York, had grown to be looked
+upon by many as a mere matter of purchase and sale, and as quite beneath
+the dignity of the more refined and cultured men. It had been heralded as
+a vast joke, therefore, when young Selden Avery, the representative of one
+of the most cultured families and the honored son of an honored ancestry,
+had suddenly announced himself as a candidate for the Assembly. His club
+friends guyed him unmercifully. "We never did believe that you were half
+as good as you pretended to be, Avery," said one of them, the first time
+he appeared at the club after his nomination, "but I don't believe a man
+of us ever suspected you of the depths of depravity that this implies.
+What ever did put such a ridiculous idea into such a level and
+self-respecting head? Out with it!"
+</p>
+<p>
+Banter of this nature met him on every hand. He realized more fully than
+ever how changed the point of view had grown to be from the historical
+days of Washington or even of Lincoln. He recalled the time when in his
+own boyhood his honored father had served in the Legislature of his native
+state, and had not felt it other than a crowning distinction. Nor had it
+been so looked upon then by his associates.
+</p>
+<p>
+Nevertheless the constant jokes and gibes, which held something of a real
+sting, had become so frequent that, young Avery felt like resenting his
+friends' humorous thrusts.
+</p>
+<p>
+"I can't see that I need be ashamed to follow in the footsteps of my
+father," he said, a little hotly. "Some of the noblest of men&mdash;those
+upon whom the history of this country depends for lustre&mdash;held seats
+in the Assembly, and helped shape the laws of their states. I don't see
+why I need apologize for a desire to do the same."
+</p>
+<p>
+"It used to be an association of gentlemen up at the state capital, my
+boy. Today it is&mdash;Lord! you know what it is, I guess. But if you
+don't, just peruse this sacred volume," laughed his friend, sarcastically,
+producing a small pamphlet.
+</p>
+<p>
+"Looks to me as if you'd be rather out of your element with your
+colleagues. 'M-m-m! Yes, here is the list. Hunted this up after I heard
+you were going to stand for your district."
+</p>
+<p>
+The English form of expression was no affectation, for the speaker was far
+more familiar with political nomenclature abroad than at home. He would
+have felt it an honor to a man to be called upon to "stand" for his
+constituency in London, but to "run" for it in New York was far less
+dignified. Standing gave an idea of repose; running was vulgar. Then, too,
+the State Legislature did not bear the proportionate relationship to
+Congress that the Commons did to Parliament, and it was always in
+connection with that latter body that he had associated the term.
+</p>
+<p>
+"Let me see. One, two, three, four, 'teen 'steen&mdash;yes, I thought I
+was right! Just exactly nineteen of your nearest colleagues are saloon
+keepers. One used to keep that disorderly house on Prince Street, four are
+butchers, one was returned because he had won fame as a base-ballist and&mdash;but
+why go further? Here, Martin, I'm trying to convince Avery that it will be
+a trifle trying on his nerves to hobnob with the new set he's making for.
+Don't you think it is rather an anti-climax from the Union to the lower
+house at Albany? Ye gods!" and he laughed, half in scorn and half in real
+amusement.
+</p>
+<p>
+John Martin had extended his hand for the small pamphlet of statistics. He
+ran his eye over the list, and then turned an amused face upon Avery.
+</p>
+<p>
+"Think you'll like it?" he asked, dryly. "Or are you taking it as my
+French friend here says his countrymen take heaven?"
+</p>
+<p>
+"How's that?" queried Avery, smiling. "In broken doses&mdash;or not at
+all?"
+</p>
+<p>
+The French gentleman stood with that poise which belongs to the successful
+man. He glanced from one to the other and spread his hands to either side.
+</p>
+<p>
+"All Frenchmen desire to go to ze heaven, zhentlemen. Why? Ah, zere air
+two at-traczions which to effrey French zhentle-man air irresisteble. Ze
+angels&mdash;zey air women&mdash;and I suppose zat ze God weal also be an
+attraction. Ees eet not so?"
+</p>
+<p>
+Every one in the group laughed and he went on gravely on.
+</p>
+<p>
+"I zink zat eet ees true&mdash;ees eet not?&mdash;zat loafly woman will
+always be vara much ob-searved even in ze heaven eef we zhentlemen are
+zere. Eef?" He cast up the comers of his eyes, and made another elaborate
+movement of his hands.
+</p>
+<p>
+The others all laughed again.
+</p>
+<p>
+"Yes, zhentlemen, ze true Frenchman cares for two zings: a new sensation&mdash;someings
+zey haf not before experienced,&mdash;and zat ees God; and for zat which
+zey haf obsearved, but of which zey can naavear obsearve enough&mdash;loafly
+woman!"
+</p>
+<p>
+The explosion of laughter that greeted this sally brought about them a
+number of other gentlemen, and the talk drifted into different channels.
+Presently young Avery glanced at his watch and started, with rather a sore
+heart toward the door. He remembered that he had promised the managers of
+his campaign that he would be seen that evening at a certain open-air
+garden frequented by the humbler portion of his constituency. He concluded
+to go alone the first time that he might the better observe without
+attracting too much attention. This plan was thought wise to enable him to
+meet the exigencies of the coming campaign when he should be called upon
+to speak to this element of this supporters.
+</p>
+<p>
+Once outside the club house, he took a card from his pocket and glanced at
+the directions he had jotted upon it.
+</p>
+<p>
+"I'll walk across to the elevated," he thought, "and make my connection
+for Grady's place that way. It will save time and look more democratic."
+</p>
+<p>
+<a name="link2H_4_0007" id="link2H_4_0007">
+<!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+</p>
+<div style="height: 4em;">
+<br /><br /><br /><br />
+</div>
+<h2>
+V.
+</h2>
+<p class="pfirst"><span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">T</span>he infinite pathos of life was never better illustrated, perhaps, than in
+the merrymaking that night at Grady's Pavilion. The easy camaradarie
+between conscious and unconscious vice; the so-evident struggle the young
+girls had made to be beautiful and stylish, and the ghastly result of
+their cheap and incongruous finery; their ignorant acceptance of leers
+that meant to them honest admiration or affection, and to others meant far
+different things; their jolly, thoughtless, eager effort to get something
+joyful out of their narrow lives; the brilliant tints in which they saw
+the future, and the ghastly light in which it stood revealed to older and
+more experienced eyes, would have combined to depress a heart less tender
+and a vision less clear than could have been attributed to Selden Avery.
+Not that Grady's Pavilion was a bad place.
+</p>
+<p>
+Many of the girls present would not have been there had it been known as
+anything short of quite respectable; but it was a free and easy place,
+where vice meets ignorance without having first made an appointment, where
+opportunity shakes the ungloved hand of youth and leaves a stain upon the
+tender palm too deep and dark for future tears to wash away.
+</p>
+<p>
+"I wonder if I am growing morbid," mused Avery, as he sighed for the third
+time while looking at the face of a girl not over eighteen years old, but
+already marked by lines that told of a vaguely dawning comprehension of
+what the future held for her. Her round-eyed companion, a girl with a
+childish mind and face, sat beside her, but all the world was bright to
+her. Life held a prince, a fortune and a career which would be hers one
+day. She had only to wait, look pretty, and be ready when the apple of
+fortune fell. Her part was to hold out a pretty apron to break its
+descent.
+</p>
+<p>
+"Oh, the infinite pathos of youth!" muttered Avery, feeling himself very
+old with his thirty years of wider experience as his eyes turned from one
+girl to the other. "It is hard to tell which is the sadder sight; the
+disillusioned one or the one who will be even more roughly awakened
+to-morrow."
+</p>
+<p>
+His heart ached whenever he studied the face of a young girl. "There is
+nothing so sad in all the wretched world," he sometimes said, "as the
+birth of a girl in this grade of life. I am not sure that the nations we
+look upon as barbarous because they strangle the little things before they
+are able to think&mdash;I am not at all sure that they are not more
+civilized than we after all. We only maim them with ignorance and utter
+dependence, and then turn them out into a life where either of these alone
+is an incalculable curse, and the combination is as fatal as fire in a
+field of ripened grain."
+</p>
+<p>
+The younger girl was looking at him. Her wide expectant eyes rested on his
+face with a frankness and interest that touched his mood anew.
+</p>
+<p>
+"Poor little thing," he said, half aloud; "if I were to see her bound hand
+and foot and cast into a den of wolves, I might hope to rescue her; but
+from this, for such as she there is absolutely no escape. How dare people
+bring into the world those who must suffer?"
+</p>
+<p>
+"Huh?" said a voice beside him. He had spoken in a semi-audible tone, and
+his neighbor had responded after his habitual fashion, to what he looked
+upon as an overture to conversation.
+</p>
+<p>
+"I did not intend to speak aloud," said Avery, turning to glance at the
+man beside him; "but I was just wondering how people dared to have
+children&mdash;girls particularly."
+</p>
+<p>
+The man beside him turned his full face upon him and examined him
+critically from head to foot. Then he laughed. It was the first time he
+had ever heard it hinted that it was not a wholly commendable thing to
+bring as many children into the world as nature would permit. His first
+thought had been that Avery was insane, but after looking at him he
+decided that he was only a grim joker.
+</p>
+<p>
+"I reckon they don't spend no great deal of time prayin' over the
+subject," he said, laughing again. Then he crossed his legs and added,
+"an' I don't suppose they get any telegrams tellin' them they're goin' to
+<i>be</i> girls, neither. If they did, a good many men would lick the boy
+that brought the despatch, for God knows most of us would a dam sight
+ruther have boys."
+</p>
+<p>
+The laugh had died out of his voice, and there was a ring of
+disappointment and aggrieved trouble in it. Selden Avery shifted his
+position.
+</p>
+<p>
+"I was not looking at it from the point of view of the parents of
+unwelcome girls," he said, presently, "but from the outlook of the girls
+of unwelcome parents. The reckoning from that side looks to me a good deal
+longer than the other." His voice was pleasant, but his eyes looked
+perplexed and determined. His neighbor began to readjust his opinion of
+Avery's sanity, and moved his chair a little farther away before he spoke.
+</p>
+<p>
+"Got any children of your own?" he inquired, succinctly. Avery shook his
+head. The man drew down the comers of his mouth in a contemptuous grimace.
+"I thought not. If you had, you'd take it a dam sight easier. Children are
+an ungrateful lot. They're never satisfied&mdash;or next to never. They
+think you're made for their comfort instead of their bein' for yours. I've
+got nine, and I know what I'm talkin' about. If you've got any sympathy to
+throw away don't waste it on children. Parents, in these days of
+degenerate youngsters, are passin' around the hat for sympathy. In my day
+it was just the other way. If one of the young ones went wrong, people
+pitied the father and blamed the child. Now-a-days they blame the father
+and weep over the young one that makes the mischief. It makes me mad."
+</p>
+<p>
+He shut his teeth with a suddenness that suggested a snap, and flashed a
+defiant look about the room.
+</p>
+<p>
+Avery glanced at his heavy, stubborn face, and decided not to reply. He
+was in no mood for controversy. And what good could it do, he said to
+himself, to argue with a mere lump of selfish egotism?
+</p>
+<p>
+"That is an unusually pretty girl over by the piano," he said, in a tone
+of mild indifference which he hoped would serve as a period to the
+conversation.
+</p>
+<p>
+"She's Tom Berton's girl," was the quick reply. "Berton's up to Albany
+most o' the time, with me. I represent our district. She's a nice little
+thing. She'll do anything you ask her to. I never see her equal for that.
+It's easier for her to do your way than it is to do her own. She likes to;
+so everybody likes her. I wish I had one like her; but my girls are as
+stubborn as mules. They won't drive, and they won't lead, and they'd
+ruther kick than eat. I don't know where they got it. Their mother wasn't
+half so bad that way, and the Lord knows it ain't in <i>my</i> family. The
+girl she's with is one o' mine. She looks like she could eat tenpenny
+nails. She might be just as pretty an' just as much liked as Ettie Berton,
+but she ain't. She's always growlin' about somethin'. I'll bet a dollar
+she'll growl about this when we get home. Ettie will think it was
+splendid. She'd have a good time at a funeral; but that girl of mine 'll
+get me to spend a dollar to come here and then she'll go home
+dissatisfied. It won't be up to what she expected.
+</p>
+<p>
+"Things never are. She's always lookin' to find things some other way.
+Now, what would you do with a girl like that?" he asked suddenly. Then
+without waiting for a reply, he added, "I give her a good tongue lashin',
+an' as she always knows it's comin', she's got so she don't kick <i>quite</i>
+so much as she used to, but she just sets an' looks sullen like that. It
+makes me so mad I could&mdash;"
+</p>
+<p>
+He did not finish his remark, but got up and strolled away without the
+formality of an adieu.
+</p>
+<p>
+Avery watched his possible future colleague until he was lost in the
+crowd, and then he walked deliberately over to where the two girls stood.
+</p>
+<p>
+"I have been talking with your father," he said, smiling and bowing to the
+older girl, "and although he did not say that I might come and talk to
+you, he told me who you were, and I think he would not object."
+</p>
+<p>
+"Oh, no; he wouldn't object," said the younger girl, eagerly. "Would he,
+Fan? Everybody talks here. He told me so before we came. It's the first
+time we've been; but he's been before. I think it's splendid, don't you?"
+</p>
+<p>
+The older girl had not spoken. She was looking at Selden Avery with half
+suppressed interest and embryonic suspicion. She still knew too little of
+life to have formed even a clearly defined doubt as to him or his
+intentions in speaking to them. She was less happy than she had expected
+to be when she dressed to come with her ever-dawning hope for a real
+pleasure. She thought there must be something wrong with her because
+things never seemed to come up to her expectations. She supposed this must
+be "society," and that when she got used to it, she would enjoy it more.
+But somehow she had wanted to resent it the first time a man spoke to her,
+and then, afterward, she was glad she did not, for he had danced with
+Ettie twice, and Ettie had said it was a lovely dance. She had made up her
+mind to accept the next offer she had, but when it came, the eyes of the
+man were so beady-black, and the odor of bay rum radiated so insistently
+from him that she declined. She hated bay rum because the worst scolding
+her father ever gave her was when she had emptied his cherished bottle
+upon her own head. The odor always brought back the heart-ache and
+resentment of that day, and so she did not think she cared to dance just
+then.
+</p>
+<p>
+Selden Avery looked at Ettie. He did not want to tell her what he did
+think and he had not the heart to dampen her ardor, so he simply smiled,
+and said:
+</p>
+<p>
+"It is my first visit here, too; and I don't know a soul. I noticed you
+two young ladies a while ago, and spoke of you to the gentleman next to me
+and it chanced to be your father"&mdash;he turned to the older girl again&mdash;"so
+that was what gave me courage to come over here. If I had thought of it
+before he left me, I'd have asked him to introduce me, but I'm rather slow
+to think. My name is Selden Avery."
+</p>
+<p>
+"Did father tell you mine?" she asked, looking at him steadily, with eyes
+that held floating ends of thoughts that were never formed in full.
+</p>
+<p>
+"No, he didn't," replied Avery, laughing a little. "He told me yours,
+though," turning to the merry child at his side. "Ettie Berton, Tom
+Berton's daughter."
+</p>
+<p>
+Ettie laughed, and clapped her hands together twice.
+</p>
+<p>
+"Got it right the first time! But what did he give me away for and not
+her? She is Francis King. That is, her father's name's King, but she is so
+awfully particular about things and so hard to suit she ought to be named
+Queen, I tell her, so I call her Queen Fan mostly." There was a little
+laugh all around, and Avery said:&mdash;
+</p>
+<p>
+"Very good, very good, indeed;" but Francis looked uncomfortable and so he
+changed the subject. Presently she looked at him and asked:&mdash;
+</p>
+<p>
+"Do you think things are ever like they are in books? Do you think this
+is? She waved her hand toward the music and the lights. In the books I
+have read&mdash;and the story papers&mdash;it all seems nicer than this
+and&mdash;and different. It is because I say that, that they all make fun
+of me and call me Queen Fan, and father says&mdash;" she paused, and a
+cold light gathered in her eyes. "He don't like it, so I don't say it
+much, now. He says it's all put on; but it ain't Everything does seem to
+turn out so different from what you expected&mdash;from the way you read
+about. I've not felt like I thought <i>maybe</i> I should to-night because&mdash;because&mdash;"
+she stopped again.
+</p>
+<p>
+"Because why?" asked Avery, laughing a little. "Because I'm not a bit like
+the usual story-book prince you ought to have met and&mdash;?"
+</p>
+<p>
+She smiled, and Ettie made a droll little grimace.
+</p>
+<p>
+"No, it wasn't that at all. I've been thinking most all evening that it
+wasn't worth&mdash;that&mdash;"
+</p>
+<p>
+"Oh, she's worried," put in Ettie, "because she got her father to spend a
+dollar to bring her. She's afraid he'll throw it up to her afterward, and
+she thinks it won't pay for that, so it spoils the whole thing before he
+does it&mdash;just being afraid he will. But I tell her he won't, this
+time. I&mdash;" Francis' eyes had filled with tears of mortification, and
+Avery pretended not to have heard. He affected a deep interest in the
+music.
+</p>
+<p>
+"Do you know what it is they are playing now?" he asked, with his eyes
+fixed upon the musicians. "I thought at first that it was going to be&mdash;No,
+it is&mdash;Ton my word I can't recall it, and I ought to know what it is,
+too. The first time I ever heard it, I remember&mdash;"
+</p>
+<p>
+He turned toward where Francis had stood, but she was gone. "Why, what has
+become of Miss King?" he asked of the other girl. Ettie looked all about,
+laughed and wondered and chattered as gaily as a bird.
+</p>
+<p>
+"I expect she's gone home. She's the queerest you ever saw. I guess she
+didn't want me to say that about her pa. But it'll make him madder than
+anything if she has gone that way. He won't like it at all&mdash;an' I
+can't blame him. What's the use to be so different from other folks?" she
+inquired, sagely, and then she added, laughing: "I don't know as she is so
+different, either. We all hate things, but we pretend we don't. Don't you
+think it's better to pretend to like things, whether you do or not?"
+</p>
+<p>
+"No," replied Avery, beginning to look with surprise upon this small
+philosopher who had no conception of the worldly wisdom of her own
+philosophy.
+</p>
+<p>
+"I do," she said, laughing again. "It goes down better. Everybody likes
+you better. I've found that out already, and so I pretend to like
+everything. Of course I do like some of 'em, and some I don't, but it's
+just as easy to say you like 'em all." She laughed again, and kept time
+with her toe on the floor.
+</p>
+<p>
+"Just what don't you like?" asked Avery, smiling. "Won't you tell me,
+truly? I won't tell any one, and I'd like to be sure of one thing you
+object to&mdash;on principle."
+</p>
+<p>
+"Well, tob&mdash;Do you smoke?" she asked.
+</p>
+<p>
+He shook his head, and pursed up his lips negatively.
+</p>
+<p>
+"I thought not," she said, gaily. "You look like you didn't. Well, I hate&mdash;hate&mdash;hate&mdash;hate
+smoke. When I go on a ferry-boat, and the air is so nice and cool and
+different from at home, and seems so clean, I just love it, and then&mdash;"
+</p>
+<p>
+"Some one sits near you and smokes," put in Avery, consolingly.
+</p>
+<p>
+"Yes, they do; and I just most pray that he'll fall over and get drownded&mdash;but
+he never does; and if he asks me if I object to smoke, I say, 'Oh! not at
+all!' and then he thinks I'm such a nice, sensible girl. Fan tells 'em
+right out that she don't like it. It makes her deadly sick, and the boys
+all hate her for it. Her father says it's da&mdash;&mdash; I was going to
+say his cuss word, but I guess I won't. Anyhow, he says it's all nonsense
+and put on. I guess I better go. There is her father looking for us. Poor
+Fan'll catch it when we get home! Good-night. I've had a lovely time,
+haven't you?" She waved her hand. Then she retraced the step she had
+taken. "Don't tell that I don't like tobacco," she said, and started away
+laughing. He followed her a few steps.
+</p>
+<p>
+"How is any fellow to know what you really do like?" he asked, smiling,
+"if you do that way?"
+</p>
+<p>
+"Fan says nobody wants to know," she said, slyly. "She says they want to
+know that I like what they want me to like, and think what they think I
+think." She laughed again. "And of course I do," she added, and bowed in
+mock submission. "Now, Fan don't. That's where she misses it; and if she
+don't&mdash;reform," she said, lowering her voice, as she neared that
+young lady's father, "she is going to see trouble that is trouble. I'll
+bet a cent on it. Don't you?" she asked, as she bestowed a bright smile
+upon Mr. King.
+</p>
+<p>
+"Yes," said Avery, and lifting his hat, turned on his heel and was lost in
+the crowd.
+</p>
+<p>
+"Where's Fan?" inquired that young lady's father in a tone which indicated
+that, as a matter of course, she was up to some devilment again.
+</p>
+<p>
+"She got a headache and went home quite a while ago," said that young
+lady's loyal little friend. "She enjoyed it quite a lot till she did get a
+headache." As they neared the street where both lived, Ettie said: "That
+man talked to her, and I think she liked him."
+</p>
+<p>
+"Humph!" said Mr. King. "I wouldn't be surprised. She'd be likely to take
+to a lunatic. I thought he was about the damnedest fool I ever saw; didn't
+you?"
+</p>
+<p>
+"Yes," said Ettie, laughing, "and I liked him for it."
+</p>
+<p>
+Mr. King burst into a roar of laughter. "Of course you did! You'd like the
+devil. You're that easy to please. I wish to the Lord Fan was," and with a
+hearty "goodnight," he left her at her father's door, and crossed the
+street.
+</p>
+<p>
+Once outside the garden, Avery drew from his pocket the little pamphlet
+which his club friend had given him, and ran his finger down the list.
+</p>
+<p>
+"King, member the&mdash;ah, ha! one end of his ward joins mine! 'M-m-m;
+yes, I see. He is one of the butchers. I suspected as much. Let me see;
+yes, he votes my ticket, too. If I'm elected we'll be comrades-in-arms, so
+to speak I suppose I ought to have told him who I was; but if I'm elected
+he'll find out soon enough, and if I'm beaten&mdash;well, I can't say that
+I'm anxious to extend the acquaintance." He replaced the book in his
+pocket as the guard called out, 'Thirty-Fourth Street! 'strain for Arlem!'
+and left the train, musing as he strolled along. "Yes, Gertrude was quite
+right&mdash;quite. We fortunate ones have no right to allow all this sort
+of thing to go on. We have no right to leave it entirely to such men as
+that to make the laws. I don't care if the fellows up at the club do guy
+me. Gertrude&mdash;" He drew from his breast-pocket a little note, and
+read it for the tenth time.
+</p>
+<p>
+"I am so gratified to hear that you have accepted the nomination," it
+said. "You have the time, and mental and moral equipment to give to the
+work Were I a man, I should not sleep o' nights until some way was devised
+to prevent all the terrible poverty and ignorance and brutishness we were
+talking about the other day. I went to see that Spillini family again. I
+was afraid to go alone, so I took with me two girls who are in a sewing
+class, which is, just now a fad at our Church Guild. I thought their
+experience with poverty would enable them to think of a way to get at this
+case; but it did not. They appeared to think it was all right It seems to
+me that ignorance and poverty leave no room for thought, or even for much
+feeling. It hurt me like a knife to have those girls laugh over it after
+we came out; at least, one of them laughed, and the other seemed scornful,
+It is not fair to expect more of them, I know, for we expect so little of
+ourselves. It is thinking of all this that makes me write to tell you how
+glad I am that you are to represent your district in Albany. Such men are
+needed, for I know you will work for the poor with the skill of a trained
+intellect and a sympathetic heart. I am so glad. Sincerely your friend,
+Gertrude Foster."
+</p>
+<p>
+Mr. Avery replaced the note in his pocket, and smiled contentedly. "I
+don't care a great deal what the fellows at the club say," he repeated.
+"I'm satisfied, if Gertrude&mdash;" He had spoken the last few words
+almost audibly, and the name startled him. He realized for the first time
+that he had fallen into the habit of thinking of her as Gertrude, and it
+suddenly flashed upon him that Miss Foster might be a good deal surprised
+by that fact if she knew it. He fell to wondering if she would also be
+annoyed. There was a tinge of anxiety in the speculation. Then it occurred
+to him that the sewing class of the Guild might give an outlet and a
+chance for a bit of pleasure to that strange girl he had seen at Grady's
+Pavilion, and he made a little memorandum, and decided to call upon
+Gertrude and suggest it to her. He fell asleep that night and dreamed of
+Gertrude Foster, holding out a helping hand to a strange, tall girl, with
+dissatisfied eyes, and that Ettie Berton was laughing gaily and making
+everybody comfortable, by asserting that she liked everything exactly as
+she found it.
+</p>
+<p>
+<a name="link2H_4_0008" id="link2H_4_0008">
+<!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+</p>
+<div style="height: 4em;">
+<br /><br /><br /><br />
+</div>
+<h2>
+VI
+</h2>
+<p class="pfirst"><span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">T</span>he next evening Avery called upon Gertrude to thank her for her letter,
+and, incidentally, to tell her of the experience at Grady's Pavilion, and
+bespeak the good office of the Guild for those two human pawns, who had,
+somehow, weighed upon his heart.
+</p>
+<p>
+Avery was not a Churchman himself, but he felt very sure that any Guild
+which would throw Gertrude Foster's influence about less fortunate girls,
+would be good, so he gave very little thought to the phase of it which was
+not wholly related to the personality of the young woman in whose eyes he
+had grown to feel he must appear well and worthy, if he retained his
+self-respect. This bar of judgment had come, by unconscious degrees, to be
+the one before which he tried his own cases for and against himself.
+</p>
+<p>
+"Would Gertrude like it if she should know? Would I dislike to have her
+know that I did this or felt that?" was now so constantly a part of his
+mental processes, that he had become quite familiar with her verdicts,
+which were most often passed&mdash;from his point of view, and in his own
+mind&mdash;without the knowledge of the girl herself.
+</p>
+<p>
+He had never talked of love to her, except in the general and impersonal
+fashion of young creatures who are wont to eagerly discuss the profound
+perplexities of life without having come face to face with one of them.
+One day they had talked of love in a cottage. The conversation had been
+started by the discussion of a new novel they had just read, and Avery
+told her of a strange fellow whom he knew, who had married against the
+wishes of his father, and had been disinherited.
+</p>
+<p>
+"He lost his grip, somehow," said Avery, "and went from one disaster into
+another. First he lost his place, and the little salary they had to live
+on was stopped. It was no fault of his. It had been in due course of a
+business change in the firm he worked for. He got another, but not so good
+a situation, but the little debts that had run up while he was idle were a
+constant drag on him. He never seemed able to catch up. Then his wife's
+health failed. She needed a change of climate, rare and delicate food, a
+quiet mind relieved of anxiety, but he could not give her these. His own
+nerves gave way under the strain, and at last sickness overtook him, and
+he had to appeal to me for a loan."
+</p>
+<p>
+It was the letter which his friend had written when in that desperate
+frame of mind, which Avery read to Gertrude the day they had discussed the
+novel together. It was a strange, desperate letter, and it had greatly
+stirred Gertrude. One passage in it had rather shocked her. It was this:
+"When a fellow is young, and knows little enough of life to accept the
+fictions of fiction as guides, he talks or thinks about it as 'love in a
+cottage.' After he has tried it a while, and suffered in heart and soul <i>because</i>
+of his love of those whom he must see day after day handicapped in mind
+and wrecked in body for the need of larger means, he begins to speak of it
+mournfully as 'poverty with love' But when that awful day comes, when
+sickness or misfortune develops before his helpless gaze all the horrors
+of dependence and agony of mind that the future outlook shows him, then it
+is that the fitting description comes, and he feels like painting above
+the door he dreads to enter&mdash;'hell at home.' Without the love there
+would be no home; without the poverty no hell. Neither lightens the
+burdens of the other. Each multiplies all that is terrible in both."
+</p>
+<p>
+Gertrude had listened to the letter with a sad heart. When she did not
+speak, Avery felt that he should modify some of its terms if he would be
+fair to his absent acquaintance.
+</p>
+<p>
+"Of course he would have worded it a little differently if he had known
+that any one else would read it. He was desperate. He had gone through
+such a succession of disasters. If anything was going to fall it seemed as
+if he was sure to be under it, so I don't much wonder at his language
+after&mdash;"
+</p>
+<p>
+"I don't wonder at it at all," said Gertrude, looking steadily into the
+fire. "What seems wonderful, is the facts which his words portray. I can
+see that they are facts; but what I cannot see is&mdash;is&mdash;"
+</p>
+<p>
+"How he could express them so raspingly&mdash;so&mdash;?" began Avery, but
+she turned to him quite frankly surprised.
+</p>
+<p>
+"Oh, no! Not that. But how can it be right that it should be so? And if it
+is not right, why do not you men who have the power, do something to
+straighten things out? Is this sort of suffering absolutely <i>necessary</i>
+in the world?"
+</p>
+<p>
+It was this talk and its suggestions which had led Avery to first take
+seriously into consideration the proposition that he run for a seat in the
+Assembly. It seemed to him that men like himself, who had both leisure and
+convictions, might do some good work there, and he began to realize that
+the law-making of the state was left, for the most part, in very dangerous
+hands, and that a law once passed must inevitably help to crystallize
+public opinion in such a way as to retard freer or better action.
+</p>
+<p>
+"To think of allowing that class of men to set the standards about which
+public opinion forms and rallies!" he thought, as the professional
+politician arose before him, and his mind was made up. He would be a
+candidate. So the night after his experience at Grady's Pavilion he had
+another puzzle to lay before Gertrude. When he entered the hallway he was
+sorry to hear voices in the drawing-room. He had hoped to find Gertrude
+and her mother alone. His first impulse was to leave his card and call at
+another time, but the servant recognizing his hesitation, ventured a bit
+of information.
+</p>
+<p>
+"Excuse me, Mr. Avery, but I don't think they will be here long. It's a
+couple of&mdash;They&mdash;"
+</p>
+<p>
+"Thank you, James. Are they not friends of Miss Gertrude?"
+</p>
+<p>
+James smiled in a manner which displayed a large capacity for pity.
+</p>
+<p>
+"Well, sir, I shouldn't say they was exactly friends. No, sir, ner yet
+callers, sir. They're some of them Guilders."
+</p>
+<p>
+Avery could not guess what Gertrude would have gilders in the drawing-room
+for at that hour, but decided to enter. "Mr. Avery;" said James, in his
+most formal and perfunctory fashion, as he drew back the portière and
+announced the new arrival No one would have dreamed from the stolid front
+presented by the liveried functionary, that he had just exchanged
+confidences with the guest.
+</p>
+<p>
+"Let me introduce my friends to you, Mr. Avery," began Gertrude, and two
+figures arose, and from one came a gay little laugh, a mock courtesy, and
+"Law me! It's him! Well, if this don't beat the Dutch!"
+</p>
+<p>
+She extended her hand to him and laughed again. "We didn't shake hands
+last night, but now's we're regul'rly interduced I guess we will," she
+added.
+</p>
+<p>
+Avery took her hand, and then offered his to her companion, and bowed and
+smiled again.
+</p>
+<p>
+"Really, I shall begin to grow superstitious," he said, in an explanatory
+tone to Gertrude. "I came here to-night to see if I could arrange to have
+you three young ladies meet; to learn if there was a chance at the Guild
+to&mdash;"
+</p>
+<p>
+"Oh," smiled Gertrude, beginning to grasp the situation. "How very nice!
+But these two are my star girls at the Guild now. We were just arranging
+some work for next week, but&mdash;"
+</p>
+<p>
+"Yas, she wants to go down to that Spillini hole agin," broke in Ettie
+Berton, and Francis King glanced suspiciously from Gertrude to Avery. She
+wondered just what these two were thinking. She felt very uncomfortable
+and wished that he had not come in. She had not spoken since Avery
+entered, and he realized her discomfort.
+</p>
+<p>
+"You treated us pretty shabbily last night, Miss King," he said, smiling,
+and then he turned to Gertrude. "She left me in the middle of a remark. We
+met at Grady's Pavilion, and if I'm elected, I learn that the fathers of
+both of these young ladies will be my companions-in-arms in the Assembly.
+They&mdash;!" In spite of herself, Gertrude's face showed her surprise,
+but Ettie Berton broke in with a gay laugh.
+</p>
+<p>
+"Are you in politics? Law me! I'd never a believed it. I don't see how
+you're agoin' to get on unless you get a&mdash;"
+</p>
+<p>
+She realized that her remark was going to indicate a belief in certain
+incapacity in him, and she took another cue.
+</p>
+<p>
+"My pa says nobody hardly can't get on in politics by himself. You see my
+pa is a sort of a starter for Fan's pa in politics, 're else he'd never
+got on in the world. Fan's pa backs him, and he starts things that her pa
+wants started."
+</p>
+<p>
+Francis moved uneasily, and Gertrude said: "That is natural enough since
+they were friends here, and, I think you told me, were in business
+together, didn't you?"
+</p>
+<p>
+Ettie laughed, and clapped her hands gaily. "That's good! In business
+together! Oh, Lord, I'll tell pa that. He'll roar. Why, pa is a
+prerofessional starter. He ain't in business with no particular one only
+jest while the startin's done."
+</p>
+<p>
+The girl appeared to think that Avery and Gertrude were quite familiar
+with professional starters, and she rattled on gaily.
+</p>
+<p>
+"I thought I'd die the time he started them butcher shops for Fan's pa,
+though. He hadn't never learnt the difference between a rib roast 'n a
+soup bone, 'n he had to keep a printed paper hung up inside o' the ice
+chest so's he'd know which kind of a piece he got out to sell; but he
+talked so nice an' smooth all the time he <i>was</i> a gettin' it out, an'
+tole each customer that the piece they asked fer was the 'choicest part of
+the animal,' but that mighty few folks had sense enough to know it&mdash;oh,
+it was funny! I used to get where I could hear him, and jest die a
+laughin'. He'd sell the best in the shop for ten cents a pound, an' he'd
+cut it which ever way they ast him to, an' make heavy weight. His price
+list was a holy show, but he jest scooped in all the trade around there in
+no time, an' the other shops had to move. Then you ought t' a seen Fan's
+pa come in there an' brace things up! Whew!" She laughed delightedly, and
+Francis's face flushed.
+</p>
+<p>
+"He braced prices up so stiff that some o' the customers left, but most of
+'em stayed rather'n hunt up a new place to start books in. Pa, he'd
+started credit books with <i>all</i> of 'em.
+</p>
+<p>
+"Pa, he was in the back room the first day Fan's pa and the new clerk took
+the shop, after pa got it good'n started. Him an' me most died laughin' at
+the kickin' o' the people. Every last one of 'em ast fer pa to wait on
+'em, but Fan's pa he told 'em that he'd bankrupted hisself and had t' sell
+out to him. Pa said he wisht he had somethin' to bankrupt on. But, law,
+he'll never make no money. He ain't built that way. He's a tip top
+perfessional starter tho', ain't he, Fan?" she concluded with a gleeful
+reminiscent grimace at her friend. Francis shifted her position awkwardly,
+and tried to feel that everything was quite as it should be in good
+society, and Gertrude made a little attempt to divert the conversation to
+affairs of the Guild, but Ettie Berton, who appeared to look upon her
+father as a huge joke, and to feel herself most at home in discussing him,
+broke in again:&mdash;
+</p>
+<p>
+"But the time he started the 'Stable fer Business Horses,' was the
+funniest yet," and she laughed until her eyes filled with tears, and she
+dried them with the lower part of the palms of her hands, rubbing them
+red.
+</p>
+<p>
+"The boss told him not to take anything <i>but</i> business horses. What
+he meant was, to be sure not to let in any fancy high-steppers, fer fear
+they'd get hurt or sick, an' he'd have trouble about 'em Well, pa didn't
+understand at first, an' he wouldn't take no mules, an' most all the
+business horses around there <i>was</i> mules, an' when drivers'd ask him
+why he wouldn't feed 'em 'er take 'em in, he jest had t' fix up the
+funniest stories y' ever heard. He tole one man that he hadn't laid in the
+kind o' feed mules eat, n' the man told him he was the biggest fool to
+talk he ever see. The mule-man he&mdash;"
+</p>
+<p>
+Francis King had arisen, and started awkwardly toward Gertrude, with her
+hand extended.
+</p>
+<p>
+"I think we ought to go," she said, uneasily, her large eyes burning with
+mortification, and an oppressed sense of being at a disadvantage.
+</p>
+<p>
+"So soon?" said Gertrude, smiling as she took her hand, and laid her other
+arm about the shoulders of Ettie, who had hastened to place herself in the
+group. "I was so entertained that I did not realize that perhaps you ought
+to go before it grows late&mdash;oh," glancing at a tiny watch in her
+bracelet, "it is late&mdash;too late for you to go way down there alone. I
+will send James, or&mdash;"
+</p>
+<p>
+"Allow me the pleasure, will you not?" asked Avery, bowing first to
+Gertrude, and then toward Francis, and Gertrude said:&mdash;
+</p>
+<p>
+"Oh, thank you, if&mdash;" but Ettie clapped her hands in glee.
+</p>
+<p>
+"Well, that's too rich! Just as if we didn't go around by ourselves all
+the time, and&mdash;Lord! pa says if anybody carries me off he'd only go
+as far as the lamp-post, and drop me as soon as the light struck me! Now
+Fan's pretty, but&mdash;" she laughed, and made clawing movements in the
+air. "Nobody'll get away with Queen Fan's long's she's got finger-nails 'n
+teeth." She snapped her pretty little white teeth together with mock
+viciousness, and laughed again. "I'd just pity the fellow that tried any
+tomfoolery with Queen Fan. He'd wish he'd died young!"
+</p>
+<p>
+They all laughed a bit at this sally, and Avery said he did not want Miss
+King to be forced to extremities in self-protection while he was able to
+relieve her of the necessity.
+</p>
+<p>
+When James closed the door behind the laughing group, he glanced at Miss
+Gertrude to see what she thought of it, but he remarked to Susan later on,
+that "Miss Gertrude looked as if she was born 'n brought up that way
+herself. She didn't show no amusement ner no sarcasm in her face. An' as
+fer Mr. Avery, it was nothing short of astonishing, to see him offer his
+arms to those two Guilders as they started down the avenue."
+</p>
+<p>
+And Susan ventured it as her present belief, that if Gertrude's father
+once caught any of her Guilders around, he'd "make short work of the whole
+business. She ought't be ashamed o' herself, so she ought. Ketch <i>me,</i>
+if I was in her shoes, a consortin' with&mdash;"
+</p>
+<p>
+"Anybody but me, Susie," put in the devoted James; but alas, for him, the
+stiff, unyielding hooked joint of his injured finger came first in contact
+with the wrist of the fair Susan as he essayed to clasp her hand, and she
+evaded the grasp and flung out of the room with a shiver. "Keep that old
+twisted base-ball bat off o' me! I&mdash;"
+</p>
+<p>
+"Oh, Susie!" said James, dolefully, to himself, as he slowly surrounded
+the offending member with the folds of his handkerchief, which gave it the
+appearance of being in hospital. "Oh, Susie! how kin you?"
+</p>
+<p>
+When John Martin, on his way, intending to drop in for the last act of the
+opera, passed Gertrude's door just in time to see Avery and the two girls
+come down the steps, his lip curled a bit, and his heart performed that
+strange feat which loving hearts have achieved in all the ages past, in
+spite of reason and of natural impulses of kindness. It took on a
+distinctly hard feeling towards Avery, and this feeling was not unmixed
+with resentment. "How dare he take girls like that to her house? I was a
+fool to take her to the Spillinis, but I'd never be idiot enough to take
+that type of girl to <i>her</i> house. Avery's political freak has dulled
+his sense of propriety."
+</p>
+<p>
+Mr. Martin wondered vaguely if he ought not to say something to Gertrude's
+father, and then he thought it might possibly be better to touch lightly
+upon it himself in talking to her.
+</p>
+<p>
+He had heard some gossip at the opera and in the club, which indicated
+that society did not approve altogether of some of the things Gertrude had
+recently said and done; but that it smiled approvingly at what it believed
+to be as good as an engagement between the young lady and Selden Avery.
+Martin ground his teeth now as he thought of it, and glanced again at the
+retreating forms of Avery and the two girls.
+</p>
+<p>
+"It was that visit to the Spillinis, and the revelation of life which it
+gave her, that is to blame for it all," he groaned. "I was an accursed
+fool&mdash;an accursed fool!"
+</p>
+<p>
+That night Gertrude lay thinking how charmingly Selden Avery had met the
+situation, and how well he had helped carry it off with Ettie and Francis.
+"He seemed to look at it all just as I do," she thought. I felt that I
+knew just what he was thinking, and he certainly guessed that I wanted him
+to see them home, exactly as if they had been girls of our own set. "Poor
+little Ettie! I wonder what we can do with, or for, such as she? She is so
+hopelessly&mdash;happy and ignorant." Then she fell asleep, and dreamed of
+rescuing Ettie from the fangs a maddened dog, and Francis stood by and
+looked scornfully at Gertrude's lacerated hands, and then pointed to her
+little friend's mangled body and the smile upon her dead lips.
+</p>
+<p>
+"She never knew what hurt her, and she teased the dog to begin with," she
+said. "You are maimed for life, and may go mad, just trying to help her&mdash;and
+she never knew and she never cared." Gertrude's dreamed had strayed and
+wandered into vagaries without form or outline, and in the morning nothing
+of it was left but an unreasonably heavy heart, and a restless desire to
+do&mdash;she knew not what.
+</p>
+<p>
+<a name="link2H_4_0009" id="link2H_4_0009">
+<!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+</p>
+<div style="height: 4em;">
+<br /><br /><br /><br />
+</div>
+<h2>
+VII.
+</h2>
+<p class="pfirst"><span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">W</span>hen Avery took his seat in the Assembly he learned that Ettie Berton's
+father had been true to his calling. He still might be described as a
+professional starter. Any bill which was in need of some one to either
+introduce or offer a speech in its favor, found in John Berton an
+ever-ready champion.
+</p>
+<p>
+Not that he either understood or believed in all the bills he presented or
+advocated. Belief and understanding were not for sale; nor, indeed, were
+they always very much within his own grasp. He was in the Legislature to
+promote, or start, such measures as stood in need of his peculiar
+abilities. This was very soon understood, and many a bill which other men
+feared or hesitated to present found its way to him and through him to a
+reading. For a while Avery watched this process with amusement. He wrote
+to Gertrude, from time to time, some very humorous letters about it; but
+finally, one day a letter came which so bitterly denounced both King and
+Berton, that Gertrude wondered what could have wrought the sudden change.
+</p>
+<p>
+"He has introduced a bill which is now before my committee," he wrote,
+"that passes all belief. It is infamous beyond words to express, and, to
+my dismay, it finds many advocates beside King and Berton. That a
+conscienceless embruted inmate of an opium dive in Mott Street might
+acknowledge to himself in the dark, and when he was alone, that he could
+advocate such a measure, seems to me possible; but men who are in one
+sense reputable, who&mdash;many of them&mdash;look upon themselves as
+respectable; men who are fathers of girls and brothers of women, could
+even consider such a bill, I would not have believed possible, and yet, I
+am ashamed to say that I learn now for the first time, that our state is
+not the only one where similar measures have not only found advocates, but
+where there were enough moral lepers with voting power to establish such
+legislation. It makes me heartsick and desperate. I am ashamed of the
+human race. I am doubly ashamed that it is to my sex such infamous laws
+are due.
+</p>
+<p>
+"You were right, my dear Miss Gertrude; you were right. It is outrageous
+that we allow mere conscienceless politicians to legislate for respectable
+people, and yet my position here is neither pleasant, nor will it, I fear,
+be half so profitable as you hope&mdash;as I hoped, before I came and
+learned all I now know. But, believe me, I shall vote on every bill and
+make every speech, with your face before me, and as if I were making that
+particular law to apply particularly to you."
+</p>
+<p>
+Gertrude smiled as she re-read that part of his letter.
+</p>
+<p>
+She wondered what awful bill Ettie's father had presented. She had never
+before thought that a legislator might strive to enact worse laws than he
+already found in the statute books. She had thought most of the trouble
+was that they did not take the time and energy to repeal old, bad laws
+that had come to us from an ignorant or brutal past.
+</p>
+<p>
+It struck her as a good idea, that a man should never vote on a measure
+that he did not feel he was making a rule of action to apply to the woman
+for whom he cared most; she knew now that she was that woman for Selden
+Avery. He had told her that the night he came to bring the news that he
+was elected. It had been told in a strangely simple way.
+</p>
+<p>
+Her father and mother had laughingly congratulated him upon his election,
+and Mr. Poster had added, banteringly: "If one may congratulate a man upon
+taking a descent like that."
+</p>
+<p>
+Gertrude had held one of her father's hands in her own, and tried by
+gentle pressure to check him. Her father laughed, and added: "The little
+woman here is trying to head me off. She appears to think&mdash;"
+</p>
+<p>
+"Papa," said Gertrude, extending her other hand to Avery, "I do think that
+Mr. Avery is to be congratulated that he has the splendid courage to try
+to do something distinctly useful for other people, than simply for the
+few of us who are outside or above most of the horrors of life. I do&mdash;"
+Avery suddenly lifted her hand to his lips, and his eyes told the rest.
+"Mr. Foster," he said, still holding the girl's hand, and blushing
+painfully, "there can never be but one horror in the world too awful for
+me to face, and that would be to lose the full respect and confidence of
+your daughter. I know I have those now, and for the rest &mdash;" He
+glanced again at Gertrude. She was pale, and she was looking with an
+appeal in her eyes to her mother.
+</p>
+<p>
+Mrs. Foster moved a step nearer, and put her arm about the girl. "For the
+rest, Mr. Avery, for the rest&mdash;later on, later on," she said, kindly.
+"Gertrude has traveled very fast these past few months, but she is her
+mother's girl yet." Then she smiled kindly, and added: "Gertrude has set a
+terrible standard for the man she will care for. I tremble for him and I
+tremble for her."
+</p>
+<p>
+"Tut, tut," said her father, "there are no standards in love&mdash;none
+whatever. Love has its own way, and standards crumble&mdash;"
+</p>
+<p>
+"In the past, perhaps. But in the future&mdash;" began his wife.
+</p>
+<p>
+"In the future," said Gertrude, as she drew nearer to her mother, "in the
+future they may not need to crumble, because,&mdash;because&mdash;" Her
+eyes met Avery's, and fell. She saw that his muscles were tense, and his
+face was unhappy.
+</p>
+<p>
+"Because men will be great enough and true enough to rise to the ideals,
+and not need to crumble the ideals to bring them to their level."
+</p>
+<p>
+Avery bent forward and grasped her hand that was within her mother's.
+</p>
+<p>
+"Thank you," he said, tremulously. "Thank you, oh, darling! and the rest
+can wait," he said, to Mrs. Poster, and dropping both hands, he left the
+room and the house.
+</p>
+<p>
+Gertrude ran up-stairs and locked her door.
+</p>
+<p>
+Mr. Foster turned to his wife with a half amused, half vexed face. "Well,
+this is a pretty kettle of fish. What's to become of Martin, I'd like to
+know?"
+</p>
+<p>
+"John Martin has never had a ghost of a chance at any time&mdash;never,"
+said his wife, slowly trailing her gown over the rug, and dragging with it
+a small stand that had caught its carved claw in the lace. It toppled and
+fell with a crash. The beautiful vase it had held was in fragments. "Oh,
+Katharine!" exclaimed her husband, springing forward to disengage her
+lace. "Oh, it is too bad, isn't it?"
+</p>
+<p>
+And Katherine Foster burst into tears, and with her arms suddenly thrown
+about her husband's neck she sobbed: "Oh, yes, it is too bad! It is too
+bad!" But it did not seem possible to her husband that the broken vase
+could have so affected her, and surely no better match could be asked for
+Gertrude. It could not be that. He was deeply perplexed, and Katherine
+Foster, with a searching look in her face, kissed him sadly as one might
+kiss the dead, and went to her daughter's room.
+</p>
+<p>
+She tapped lightly and then said, "It is I, daughter."
+</p>
+<p>
+The girl opened the door and as quickly closed and locked it. Instantly
+their arms were around each other and both were close to tears.
+</p>
+<p>
+"Don't try to talk, darling," whispered Mrs. Foster, as they sat down upon
+the couch. "Don't try to talk. I understand better than you do yet, and
+oh, Gertrude, your mother loves you!"
+</p>
+<p>
+"Yes, mamma," said the girl, hoarsely. "Dear little mamma&mdash;poor
+little mamma, we all love you;" and Mrs. Foster sighed.
+</p>
+<p>
+<a name="link2H_4_0010" id="link2H_4_0010">
+<!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+</p>
+<div style="height: 4em;">
+<br /><br /><br /><br />
+</div>
+<h2>
+VIII.
+</h2>
+<p class="pfirst"><span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">T</span>he day Gertrude received Avery's letter about bill number 408, she asked
+her father what the bill was about. He looked at her in surprise, and then
+at his wife. "I don't know anything about it, child," he said; "Why?"
+</p>
+<p>
+Gertrude drew from her pocket Avery's letter and read that part of it. Her
+father's face clouded.
+</p>
+<p>
+"What business has he to worry you with his dirty political work? I infer
+from what he says that it is a bill that I've only heard mentioned once or
+twice. The sort of thing they do in secret sessions and keep from the
+newspapers in the main. That is, they are only barely named in the paper
+and under a number or heading which people don't understand. I'm disgusted
+with Avery&mdash;perfectly!" Gertrude was surprised, but with that
+ignorance and absolute sincerity of youth, she appealed to her mother.
+</p>
+<p>
+"Mamma, do you see any reason why, from that letter, papa should be vexed
+with Mr. Avery? It seemed to me to have just the right tone; but I am
+sorry he did not tell me just what the bill is."
+</p>
+<p>
+"You let me catch him telling you, if it's what I think it is," retorted
+her father, rather hotly. "It's not fit for your ears. Good women have no
+business with such knowledge and&mdash;"
+</p>
+<p>
+Mrs. Foster held up a warning finger to her daughter, but the girl had not
+been convinced.
+</p>
+<p>
+"Don't good men know such things, papa? Don't such bills deal with people
+in a way which will touch women, too? I can't see why you put it that way.
+If a bill is to be passed into a law, and it is of so vile a nature as you
+say and as this letter indicates, in whose interest is it to be silent or
+ignorant? Do you want such a bill passed? Would mamma or I?"
+</p>
+<p>
+Her father laughed, and rose from the table. "It is in the interest of
+nothing good. No, I should say if you or your mother, or any other
+respectable mother at all, were in the Legislature, no such bill would
+have a ghost of a chance; but&mdash;"
+</p>
+<p>
+Gertrude's eyes were fixed upon her father. They were very wide open and
+perplexed.
+</p>
+<p>
+"Then it can be only in the interest of the vilest and lowest of the race
+that good men keep silent, and prefer to have good women ignorant and
+helpless in such&mdash;" she began; but her father turned at the door and
+said, nervously and almost sharply, "Gertrude, if Avery has no more sense
+than to start you thinking about such things, I advise you to cut his
+acquaintance. Such topics are not fit for women; I am perfectly disgusted
+with&mdash;"
+</p>
+<p>
+As he was passing out of the dining-room, John Martin entered the street
+door and faced him. "Hello, Martin! Glad to see you! The ladies are still
+at luncheon; won't you come right in here and join them in a cup of
+chocolate?"
+</p>
+<p>
+He was heartily glad of the interruption, and felt that it was very timely
+indeed that Mr. Martin had dropped in.
+</p>
+<p>
+"No, I can't take off my top-coat. Get yours. I want you to join me in a
+spin in the park. I've got that new filly outside." Mr. Foster ran
+up-stairs to get ready for the drive, and the ladies insisted that a cup
+of hot chocolate was the very thing to prepare Mr. Martin for the nipping
+air. He was a trifle ill at ease. He wanted to speak of Selden Avery, and
+he feared if he did so that he would say the wrong thing. He had come
+to-day, partly to have a talk with his friend Foster about certain gossip
+he had heard. Fate took the reins.
+</p>
+<p>
+In rising, Gertrude had dropped Avery's letter. John Martin was the first
+to see it. He laughingly offered it to her with the query: "Do you sow
+your love letters about that way, Miss Gertrude?"
+</p>
+<p>
+"Gertrude's love letters take the form of political speeches just now, and
+bills and committee reports and the like," laughed her mother. "Her father
+was just showing his teeth over that one, He thinks women have no&mdash;"
+</p>
+<p>
+"Mr. Martin, tell me truly," broke in the girl, "tell me truly, don't you
+think that we are all equally interested in having only good laws made?
+And don't you think if a proposed measure is too bad for good women even
+to be told what it is, that it is bad enough for all good people to
+protest against?"
+</p>
+<p>
+"How are they going to protest if they don't know what it is?" laughed
+Martin. "Well, Miss Gertrude, I believe that is the first time I ever
+suspected you to be of Celtic blood. But what dreadful measure is Avery
+advocating now?" he smiled. "Really, I shouldn't have believed it of
+Avery!"
+</p>
+<p>
+"What!" exclaimed Mr. Poster, entering with his top-coat buttoned to the
+chin, and his driving-hat in hand. Gertrude still held the letter. "No,
+nor should I have believed it of Avery. It was an outrageous thing for him
+to do. What business has Gertrude or Katherine with his disgusting old
+bills. Just before you came in I advised Gertrude to cut him entirely, and&mdash;"
+</p>
+<p>
+Mrs. Foster was trying to indicate to her husband that he was off the
+track, and that Mr. Martin did not understand him; but he had the bit in
+his teeth and went on. "You agree with me now, don't you? What do you
+think of his mentioning such things to Gertrude?" He reached over and took
+the letter from his daughter's hand, and read a part of the obnoxious
+paragraph.
+</p>
+<p>
+John Martin's face was a study. He glanced at the two ladies, and then
+fixed his eyes upon Gertrude's father.
+</p>
+<p>
+"Good Gad!" he said, slowly and almost below his breath. "If I were in
+your place I should shoot him. The infamous&mdash;" He checked himself,
+and the two men withdrew. Gertrude and her mother waved at them from the
+window, and then the girl said: "I intend to know what that bill is. What
+right have men to make laws that they themselves believe are too infamous
+for good women even to know about? Don't you believe if all laws or bills
+had to be openly discussed before and with women, it would be better,
+mamma? I do."
+</p>
+<p>
+Her mother's cheek was against the cold glass of the window. She was
+watching the receding forms. Presently she turned slowly to her daughter
+and said, in a trembling tone:&mdash;
+</p>
+<p>
+"Such bills as this one," she drew a small printed slip from her bosom and
+handed it to Gertrude, "such bills as that would never be dreamed of by
+men if they knew they must pass the discussion of a pure girl or a mother&mdash;never!
+Their only chance is secret session, and the fact that even men like your&mdash;like
+Mr. Martin and&mdash;and&mdash;" she was going to say "your father," but
+the girl pressed her hand and she did not. "That even such as they&mdash;for
+what reason heaven only knows&mdash;think they are serving the best
+interests of the women they love by a silence which fosters and breeds
+just such measures as&mdash;"
+</p>
+<p>
+Gertrude was reading the queer, blind phraseology of the bill. Katherine
+had watched her daughter's face as she talked, and now the girl's lips
+were moving and she read audibly: "be, and is hereby enacted, that
+henceforth the legal age in the state of New York whereat a female may
+give consent to the violation of her own person shall be reduced to ten
+years."
+</p>
+<p>
+Gertrude dropped the paper in her lap and looked up like a frightened,
+hunted creature. "Great God!" she exclaimed, with an intensity born of a
+sudden revelation. "Great God! and they call themselves men! And other men
+keep silence&mdash;furnish all the soil and nurture for infamy like that!
+Those who keep silence are as guilty as the rest! Those who try to prevent
+women from knowing&mdash;oh, mamma!" Her eyes were intense. She sprang to
+her feet; "and John Martin, who thinks he loves <i>me</i> is one of those
+men! Knowing such a bill as that is pending, his indignation is aroused,
+not at the bill, not at the men who try to smuggle it through, not at the
+awful thing it implies, but that so strict a silence is not kept that such
+as <i>we</i> may not know of it! He blames Selden Avery for coming to me&mdash;to
+us&mdash;with his splendid chivalry, and sharing with us his horror,
+making us the confidants of that inner conscience which sees, in the
+intended victims of this awful bill, his little sisters and yours and
+mine!" There were indignant tears in her eyes. She closed them, and her
+white lips were drawn tense. Presently she asked, without opening her
+eyes: "Mamma, do you suppose if you, instead of Mr. Avery, were chairman
+of that committee, that such a bill as that would ever have been
+presented? Do you suppose, if any mother on earth held the veto power,
+that such a bill would ever disgrace a statute book? Are there enough men,
+even of a class who generally go to the Legislature, who, in spite of
+their fatherhood, in spite of the fact that they have little sisters, are
+such beasts as to pass a bill like that? A ten-year-old girl! A mere baby!
+And&mdash;oh, mamma! it is too hideous to believe, even of&mdash;such a
+bill could never pass. Never on earth! Surely, Ettie Berton, poor little
+thing, has the only father living who is capable of that!"
+</p>
+<p>
+Mrs. Foster opened her lips to say that several states already had the
+law, and that one had placed the age at seven; but she checked herself.
+Her daughter's excitement was so great, she decided to wait. The
+experience of the past few months had awakened the fire in the nature of
+this strong daughter of hers. She had seen the cool, steady, previously
+indifferent, well-poised girl stirred to the very depths of her nature
+over the awful conditions of poverty, ignorance, and vice she had, for the
+first time, learned to know. Gertrude had become a regular student of some
+of the problems of life, and she had carried her studies into practical
+investigation. It had grown to be no new thing for her to take Francis, or
+Ettie, or both, when she went on these errands, and the study of their
+points of view&mdash;of the effect of it all upon their ignorance-soaked
+minds, had been one of the most touching things to her. Their imaginations
+were so stunted&mdash;so embryonic, so undeveloped that they saw no better
+way. To them, ignorance, poverty, squalor, and vice were a necessary part
+of life. Wealth, comfort, happiness, ambition were, naturally and rightly,
+perquisites, some way, some how, of the few.
+</p>
+<p>
+"God rules, and all is as he wishes it or it would not be that way,"
+sagely remarked Francis King, one day. It had startled Gertrude. Her
+philosophy, her observation, her reason, and her religion were in a state
+of conflict just then. She had alway supposed that she was an Episcopalian
+with all that this implied. She was beginning to doubt it at times.
+</p>
+<p>
+Mrs. Foster looked at her daughter now, as she sat there flushed and
+excited. She wondered what would come of it all. She had always studied
+this daughter of hers, and tried to follow the girl's moods. Now she
+thought she would cut across them.
+</p>
+<p>
+"Gertrude, you may put that bill with your letter. Mr. Avery mailed it to
+me. Of course he meant that I should show it to you if I thought best. I
+did think best, but now&mdash;but&mdash;I don't want you to excite
+yourself too&mdash;" She broke off suddenly. Her daughter's eyes were upon
+her in surprise. Mrs. Foster laughed a little nervously, and kissed the
+girl's hand as it lay in her own. "It seems rather droll for your gay
+little mother to caution you against losing control of yourself, doesn't
+it?" she asked. "You who were always all balance wheel, as your father
+says. But&mdash;"
+</p>
+<p>
+"Mamma, don't you think Mr. Avery did perfectly right to send me that
+letter and this to you?" broke in Gertrude, as if she had not heard the
+admonition of her mother, and had followed her own thoughts from some more
+distant point.
+</p>
+<p>
+"Perfectly," said her mother. "He was evidently deeply disturbed by the
+bill. He felt that you were, and should be, his confidant. He simply did
+not dream of hiding it from you, I believe. It was the spontaneous act of
+one who so loves you that his whole life&mdash;all of that which moves him
+greatly&mdash;must, as a matter of course, be open to you. I thought that
+all out when the bill came addressed to me. He&mdash;" The girl kissed her
+in silence.
+</p>
+<p>
+"You have such splendid self-respect, Gertrude. Most of us&mdash;most
+women&mdash;have none. We do not expect, do not demand, the least respect
+that is real from men. They have no respect for our opinions, and so upon
+all the real and important things of life, they hold out to us the sham of
+silence as more respectful than candor. And we&mdash;most of us&mdash;are
+weak enough to say we like it. Most of us&mdash;"
+</p>
+<p>
+Gertrude slipped down upon a cushion at the feet of her mother, and put
+her young, strong arms about the supple waist. She had of late read from
+time to time so much of the unrest and scorn back of the gay and compliant
+face of her mother. "Mamma, my real mamma," she said, softly, "I
+</p>
+<p>
+"Men of your father's generation did not want mental comrades in their
+wives, Gertrude. They&mdash;"
+</p>
+<p>
+"A telegram, Miss Gertrude," said James, drawing aside the portiere.
+</p>
+<p>
+"The bill has been rushed through. Passed. Nineteen majority. Avery."
+Gertrude read it and handed it to her mother, and both women sat as if
+stunned by a blow.
+</p>
+<p>
+<a name="link2H_4_0011" id="link2H_4_0011">
+<!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+</p>
+<div style="height: 4em;">
+<br /><br /><br /><br />
+</div>
+<h2>
+IX.
+</h2>
+<p class="pfirst"><span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">A</span>t the close of the Legislature, John Berton, professional starter, and
+his friend and ally, the father of Francis King, had returned to the city.
+Francis had grown, so her father thought, more handsome and less agreeable
+than ever. Her eyes were more dissatisfied, and she was, if possible, less
+pliant. She and Ettie Berton were working now in a store, and Francis said
+that she did not like it at all. The money she liked. It helped her to
+dress more as she wished, and then it had always cut Francis to the quick
+to be compelled to ask her father for money whenever she needed it, even
+for car fare.
+</p>
+<p>
+She had lied a good many times. Her whole nature rebelled against lying,
+but even this was easier to her than the status of dependence and beggary,
+so she had lied often about the price of shoes, or of a hat or dress, that
+there might be a trifle left over as a margin for her use in other ways.
+Her father was not unusually hard with her about money, only that he
+demanded a strict accounting before he gave it to her.
+</p>
+<p>
+"What in thunder do you want of money?" he would ask, more as a matter of
+habit than anything else. "How much 'll it take? Humph! Well, I guess
+you'll have to have it, but&mdash;" and so the ungracious manner of giving
+angered and humiliated her.
+</p>
+<p>
+"Pa, give me ten cents; I want it fer car fare. Thanks. Now fork over six
+dollars; I got to get a dress after the car gets me to the store," was
+Ettie Berton's method. Her father would pretend not to have the money, and
+she would laugh and proceed to rifle his pockets. The scuffle would
+usually end in the girl getting more than she asked for, and was no
+unpleasant experience to her, and it appeared to amuse her father greatly.
+It was not, therefore, the same motive which actuated the two when they
+decided to try their fortunes as shop girls. The desire to be with
+Francis, to be where others were, for the sight and touch of the pretty
+things, for new faces and for mild excitement, were moving causes with
+Ettie Berton. The money she liked, too; but if she could have had the
+place without the money or the money without the place, her choice would
+have been soon made. She would stay at the store. That she was a general
+favorite was a matter of course. She would do anything for the other
+girls, and the floorwalkers and clerks found her always obedient and gaily
+willing to accept extra burdens or to change places. For some time past,
+however, she had been on a different floor from the one where Francis
+presided over a trimming counter, and the girls saw little of each other,
+except on their way to and from the store.
+</p>
+<p>
+At last this changed too, for Francis was obliged to remain to see that
+the stock of her department was properly put away. At first Ettie waited
+for her, but later on she had fallen into the habit of going with a child
+nearer her own age, a little cash girl. Ettie was barely fourteen, and her
+new friend a year or two younger. At last Francis King found that the
+motherless child had invited her new friends home with her, and had gone
+with them to their homes.
+</p>
+<p>
+As spring came on, Ettie went one Sunday to Coney Island, and did not tell
+Francis until afterward. She said that she had had a lovely time, hut she
+appeared rather disinclined to talk about it. At the Guild one Wednesday
+evening, after the class began again in the fall, Francis King told
+Gertrude this, and asked her advice. She said: "It's none o' my business,
+and she don't like me much any more, but I thought maybe I had ought to
+tell you, for&mdash;for&mdash;since I been in the store, I've learnt a
+good deal about&mdash;about things; an' Ettie she don't seem to learn much
+of anything."
+</p>
+<p>
+"Is Ettie still living at her cousin's?" asked Gertrude.
+</p>
+<p>
+"Yes," said Francis, scornfully, "but she 'bout as well be livin' by
+herself. Her cousin's always just gaddin' 'round tryin' t' get married. I
+never did see such an awful fool. Before Et's pa went to the Legislature,
+we all did think he was goin' t' marry her, but now&mdash;"
+</p>
+<p>
+"Legislative honors have turned his head, have they?" smiled Gertrude,
+intent on her own thoughts in another direction. She was not, therefore,
+prepared for the sudden fling of temper in the strange girl beside her.
+"Yes, it has; 'n if it don't turn some other way before long, I'll break
+his neck for him. <i>I</i> ain't marryin' a widower if I do like Ettie."
+</p>
+<p>
+In spite of herself, Gertrude started a little. She looked at Francis
+quite steadily for a moment, and then said: "Could you and Ettie come to
+my house and spend the day next Sunday? I'm glad you told me of Ettie's&mdash;of&mdash;about
+the change in her manner toward you."
+</p>
+<p>
+"Don't let on that I told you anything," said Francis, as they parted.
+</p>
+<p>
+Since they had been in the store they had not gone regularly to the weekly
+evening Guild meetings, and Gertrude had seen less of them. She was
+surprised, however, on the following Sunday, to see the strange,
+mysterious change in Ettie. A part of her frank, open, childish manner was
+gone, and yet nothing more mature had taken its place. There would be
+flashes of her usual manner, but long silences, quite foreign to the
+child, would follow. At the dinner table she grew deadly ill, and had to
+be taken up stairs. Gertrude tucked a soft cover about her on the couch in
+her own room, and gave her smelling salts and a trifle of wine. The child
+drank the wine but began to cry.
+</p>
+<p>
+"Oh, don't cry, Ettie," said Gertrude, stroking her hair gently. "You'll
+be over it in a little while. I think our dining-room is much warmer than
+yours, and it was very hot to-day. Then your trying to eat the olives when
+you don't like them, might easily make you sick. You'll be all right after
+a little I'm sure. Don't cry."
+</p>
+<p>
+"That's the same kind of wine I had that day at Coney Island," she said,
+and Gertrude thought how irrelevant the remark was, and how purely of
+physical origin were the tears of such a child.
+</p>
+<p>
+"Would you like a little more?" asked Gertrude, smiling.
+</p>
+<p>
+Ettie shivered, and closed her eyes.
+</p>
+<p>
+"No; I don't like it. I guess it ain't polite to say so, but&mdash;Oh, of
+course <i>maybe</i> I'd like it if I was well, but it made me sick that
+time, an' so I don't like it now when I <i>am</i> sick." She laughed in a
+childish way, and then she drew Gertrude's face down near her own. "Say,
+I'll tell you the solemn truth. It made me tight that day. He told me so
+afterwards, n' I guess it did."
+</p>
+<p>
+Here was a revelation, indeed. Gertrude stroked the fluffy hair, gently.
+She was trying to think of just the right thing to say. It was growing
+dark in the room. Ettie reached up again and drew Gertrude's face down.
+"Say," she whispered, "you won't be mad at me for that, will you? He told
+me I wasn't to blab to anybody; but it always seems as if you wouldn't be
+mad at me, and"&mdash;she began to weep again.
+</p>
+<p>
+"Don't cry," said Gertrude, again, gently. "Of course I am not angry with
+you. I am sorry it happened, but&mdash;Ettie, who is <i>he?</i>" Ettie
+sobbed on, and held her arms close about Gertrude's neck. Again the older
+girl said, with lips close to the child's ear:
+</p>
+<p>
+"Don't you think it would be better to tell me who 'he' is? Is he so young
+as to not know better than to advise you that way, dear?"
+</p>
+<p>
+"He's forty," sobbed Ettie, "an' he's rich, an' he's got a girl of his own
+as big as me. I saw her one day in the store. He's the cashier."
+</p>
+<p>
+Gertrude shivered, and the child felt the movement.
+</p>
+<p>
+"Don't you ever, ever tell," she panted, "or he'll kill me&mdash;and so
+would pa."
+</p>
+<p>
+"Oh, he would, would he?" exclaimed Francis, who had stolen silently into
+the room and had stood unobserved in the darkness. "The cashier! the mean
+devil! I always hated his beady eyes, and he tried his games on me! But
+I'll kill him before he shall go&mdash;do you any real harm, Ettie! I
+will! I will! Why didn't you tell me? I watched for a while and then I
+thought&mdash;I thought he had given it up. Oh, Ettie, Ettie!" The tall
+form of the girl seemed to rise even higher in the darkness, and one could
+feel the fire of her great eyes. Her hands were clenched and her muscles
+tense.
+</p>
+<p>
+Ettie was sobbing anew, and Gertrude, holding her hand, was stroking the
+moist forehead and trying to quiet her.
+</p>
+<p>
+"Oh, Fan! Oh, Fan! I didn't want you to know," sobbed the child, with
+pauses between her words. "He said nobody needn't ever know if I'd do
+just's he told me. He said&mdash;but when pa came home I was so scared,
+an' I'm sick most all the time, an'&mdash;an', oh, if I wasn't so awful
+afraid to die I'd wisht I <i>was</i> dead!"
+</p>
+<p>
+"Dead!" gasped Francis, grasping Ettie's wrist and pulling her hand from
+her face in a frenzy of the new light that was dawning upon her half-dazed
+but intensely stimulated mental faculties. She half pulled the smaller
+girl to her feet.
+</p>
+<p>
+"Dead! Ettie Berton, you tell me the God's truth or I'll tear him to
+pieces right in the store. You tell me the God's truth! has he&mdash;done
+anything awful to you?" A young tiger could not have seemed more savage,
+and Ettie clung with her other arm to Gertrude.
+</p>
+<p>
+"No! No! No!" she shrieked, and struggled to free herself from the clutch
+upon her wrist. Then with the pathetic superstition and ignorance of her
+type: "Cross my heart I Hope I may die!" she added, and as Francis relaxed
+her grasp upon the wrist, Ettie fell in an unconscious little heap upon
+the floor.
+</p>
+<p>
+Francis was upon her knees beside her in an instant, and Gertrude was
+about to ring for a light and for her mother when Francis moaned: "Oh,
+send for a doctor, quick. Send for a doctor! She was lying and she crossed
+her heart. She will die! She will die!"
+</p>
+<p>
+<a name="link2H_4_0012" id="link2H_4_0012">
+<!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+</p>
+<div style="height: 4em;">
+<br /><br /><br /><br />
+</div>
+<h2>
+X.
+</h2>
+<p class="pfirst"><span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">B</span>ut Ettie Berton did not die. Perhaps it would have been quite as well for
+her if she had died before the impotent and frantic rage of her father had
+still further darkened the pathetically appealing, love-hungry little
+heart, whose every beat had been a throbbing, eager desire to be liked, to
+please, to acquiesce; to the end that she should escape blame, that she
+might sail on the smooth and pleasant sea of general praise and approval.
+</p>
+<p>
+Alas, the temperament which had brought her the dangerous stimulus of
+praise, for self-effacement, had joined hands with opportunity to wreck
+the child's life&mdash;and no one was more bitter in his denunciation than
+her father's friend and her aforetime admirer&mdash;Representative King.
+"If she was a daughter o' mine I'd kill her," he repeated to his own
+household day after day. "She sh'd never darken <i>my</i> door agin.
+That's mighty certain. It made me mad the other day to hear Berton talk
+about takin' her back home. The old fool! What does he want of her? An'
+what kind of an example that I'd like t' know t' set t' decent girls? I
+told him right then an' there if he let his soft heart do him that a'way I
+was done with him for good an' all, n' if I ketch you a goin' up there t'
+see her agin, you can just stay away from here, that's all!" This last had
+been to Francis, and Francis had shut her teeth together very hard, and
+the glitter in her eyes might have indicated to a wiser man that it was
+not chiefly because of his presence there that this daughter cared to
+return to her home after her clandestine visits to Ettie Berton. A wiser
+man, too, might have guessed that the prohibition would not prohibit, and
+that poor little Ettie Berton would not be deserted by her loyal friend
+because of his displeasure.
+</p>
+<p>
+"I have told her that she may live with us by and by," said Gertrude to
+Seldon Avery one afternoon; "but that is no solution of the problem. And
+besides it is her father's duty to care for her and to do it without
+hurting the child's feelings, too. Can't you go to him and have a talk
+with him? You say he seems a kind-hearted, well-meaning, easily-led man.
+Beside, he has no right to blame her. He has done more than any one else
+in this state to make the path of the cashier easy and smooth. If it were
+not for poor little Ettie I should be heartily glad of it all&mdash;of the
+lesson for him. Can't you go to him and to that Mr. King and make them see
+the infamy of their work, and force them to undo it? Can't you? Is there
+no way?"
+</p>
+<p>
+Avery had gone. He argued in vain. "Why do you blame the cashier," he had
+said to Berton. "He has committed no legal offence. Our laws say he has
+done no wrong. Then why blame him? Why blame Ettie? She is a mere
+yielding, impulsive child, and, surely, if he has done no wrong she has
+not. If&mdash;"
+</p>
+<p>
+"Now look a-here, Mr. Avery," said John Berton, hotly, "I know what you're
+a-hittin' at an' you can jest save your breath. I didn't help pass that
+law t' apply to <i>my</i> girl, n' you know it damned well. I ain't in no
+mood just now t' have you throw it up to me that she was about the first
+one it ketched, neather. How was I a-goin' to know that? That there bill
+wasn't intended t' apply t' <i>my</i> girl, I tell you. An' then she
+hadn't ought to a said she went with him willin'ly, either. If she hadn't
+a said that we could a peppered him, but as it is he's all right, an&mdash;"
+</p>
+<p>
+"That is what the law contemplates, isn't it?&mdash;for other girls, of
+course, not for yours," began Avery, whose natural impulses of kindness
+and generosity he was holding back.
+</p>
+<p>
+"Now you hold on!" exclaimed Berton, feebly groping about for a reply.
+"You know I never got up that bill. You know mighty well the man that got
+it up an' come there an' lobbied for it, was one o' <i>your</i> own kind&mdash;a
+silk stocking.
+</p>
+<p>
+"You know I only started it 'n' sort o' fathered it for <i>him</i>. I
+ain't no more to blame than the others. Go 'n talk t' them. I've had my
+dose. Go 'n talk t' King. He says yet that it's a mighty good bill&mdash;but
+I ain't so damned certain as I was. It don't look 's reasonable t' me's it
+did last session." Avery left him, in the hope that a little later on he
+would conclude that his present attitude toward his daughter might undergo
+like modification, with advantage to all concerned. It was early in the
+evening, and Avery concluded to step into a workingman's club on his way
+to his lodgings. He had no sooner entered the door, than someone
+recognized him as the candidate of a year ago. There was an immediate
+demand that he give them a speech. He had had no thought of speaking, but
+the opening tempted him, and the hand clapping was indent. The chairman
+introduced him as "the only kid-glove member in the last Legislature who
+didn't sell his soul, to monopoly, and put a mortgage on his heavenly home
+at the behest of Wall Street."
+</p>
+<p>
+The applause which met this sally was long sustained, and the laughter,
+while hearty, was not altogether pleasant of tone. Avery stood until there
+was silence. Then he began with a quiet smile.
+</p>
+<p>
+"Mr. Chairman and gentlemen." He paused, and looked over the room again.
+"I beg your pardon. I am accustomed to face men only. Mr. Chairman, <i>ladies</i>
+and gentlemen." There was a ripple of laughter over the room. "Let me say
+how glad I am to make that amendment, and how glad I shall be, for one,
+when I am able to make it in the body to which I have the honor to belong&mdash;the
+Legislature." Some one said: "ah, there," but he did not pause. "You labor
+men have taken the right view of it in this club. There is not a question,
+not one, in all the domain of labor or legislation which does not strike
+at woman's welfare as vitally as it does at man's; not one." There was
+feeble applause. "But I will go further. I will say, there is not only not
+an economic question which is not <i>as</i> vital to her, but it is far <i>more</i>
+vital than it is to man. The very fact of her present legal status rests
+upon the other awful fact of her absolute financial dependence upon men."
+Someone laughed, and Avery fired up. "This one fact has made sex maniacs
+of men, and peopled this world with criminals, lunatics, and liars! This
+one fact! This one fact!"
+</p>
+<p>
+His intensity had at last forced silence, and quieted those members who
+were at first inclined to take as a gallant joke his opening remarks. "Let
+me take a text, for what I want to say to you on the economic question,
+from the Bible.
+</p>
+<p>
+"Oh, give us a rest!"
+</p>
+<p>
+"Suffer little children!"
+</p>
+<p>
+"Remember the Sabbath day!" and like derisive calls, mingled with a laugh
+and distinct hisses. The gavel beat in vain; Avery waited. At last there
+was silence, and he said: "I was not joking. The fact that you all know me
+as a freethinker misled you; but although I did say that I wished to take
+as a sort of text a passage from the Bible, I was in earnest. This is the
+text: 'The rich man's wealth is his strong city; the destruction of the
+poor is their poverty.' Again there was a laugh, with a different ring to
+it, and clapping of hands.
+</p>
+<p>
+"I think that I may assume," he went on, "that no audience before which I
+am likely to appear, will suspect me of accepting the Bible as altogether
+admirable. Some of the prophets and holy men of old, as I read of their
+doings in the scriptures, always impress me as having been long overdue at
+the penitentiary."
+</p>
+<p>
+There was laughter and applause at this sally, and the intangible
+something which emanates from an audience which tells a speaker that he
+now has a mental grasp upon his hearers, made itself felt. The slight air
+of resentment which arose when he had said that he should refer for his
+authority to the Bible subsided, and he went on.
+</p>
+<p>
+"But notwithstanding these facts and opinions, one sometimes finds in the
+Bible things that are true. Sometimes they are not only true, but they are
+also good. Again they are good in fact, in sentiment, and in diction. Now
+when this sort of conjunction occurs, I am strongly moved to drop for the
+time such differences as I may have with other portions and sentiments,
+and give due credit where credit is due.
+</p>
+<p>
+"Therefore, when I find in the tenth chapter of Proverbs this: 'The rich
+man's wealth is his strong city; the destruction of the poor is their
+poverty,' I shake hands with the author, and travel with him for this trip
+at least. The prophet does not say that their destruction is ignorance, or
+vice, or sin, or any of the ordinary blossoms of poverty which it is the
+fashion to refer to as its root. He tells us the truth&mdash;the
+destruction of the poor <i>is</i> their <i>poverty.</i>
+</p>
+<p>
+"And who are the poor? Are they not those who, in spite of their labor,
+their worth, and their value to the state as good citizens are still
+dependent upon the good-will&mdash;the charity, I had almost said&mdash;of
+someone else who has power over the very food they have earned a hundred
+times over, and the miserable rags they are allowed to wear instead of the
+broadcloth they have earned? Are they not those who, because of economic
+conditions, are suppliants where they should be sovereign citizens,
+dependents where they should be free and independent and self-respecting
+persons?"
+</p>
+<p>
+"Right you are!" "Drive it home!" came with the applause from the
+audience.
+</p>
+<p>
+"Are they not those who must obey oppressive laws made by those who
+legislate against the helpless and in favor of the powerful? Are they not
+those whose voices are silenced by subjection, whose wishes and needs are
+trampled beneath the feet of the controlling class?"
+</p>
+<p>
+The applause was ready now and instant. Avery paused. There was silence.
+"And who are these?" he asked, and paused again.
+</p>
+<p>
+"What class of people more than any other&mdash;more than all others&mdash;fits
+and fills each and every one of these queries?" "Laboring men!" shouted
+several. "All of us!" "No," said Avery, "you are wrong. To all of you&mdash;to
+all so-called laboring men they do apply; but more than to these, in more
+insidious ways, do they apply to laboring women. To all women, in fact;
+for no matter how poor a man is, his wife and daughters are poorer; no
+matter how much of a dependent he is, the woman is more so, for she is the
+dependent of a dependent, the serf of a slave, the chattel of a chattel!
+The suppliant, not only for work and wage, but the suppliant at the hands
+of sex power for equality with even the man who is under the feet and the
+tyranny of wealth. They share together that tyranny and poverty, but he
+thrusts upon her alone the added outrage of sex subjugation and legal
+disability." He paused, and held up his hand. Then he said, slowly, making
+each word stand alone:&mdash;
+</p>
+<p>
+"And I tell you, gentlemen, with my one term's experience in the
+Legislature and what it has taught me&mdash;I tell you that there is no
+outrage which wealth and power can commit upon man that it cannot and does
+not commit doubly upon woman! There is no cruelty upon all this cruel
+earth half so terrible as the tyranny of sex! And again, I tell you that
+to woman every man is a capitalist in wealth and in power, and I
+reiterate:&mdash;the destruction of the poor is their <i>poverty.</i> It
+has been doubly woman's destruction. Her absolute financial dependence
+upon men has given him the power and&mdash;alas, that I should be
+compelled to say it!&mdash;the will, to deny her all that is best and
+loftiest in life, and even to crush out of her the love of liberty and the
+dignity of character which cares for the better things. Look at her
+education! Look at the disgraceful 'annexes' and side shifts which are
+made to prevent our sisters from acquiring even the same, or as good, an
+education as we claim for ourselves. Look&mdash;" He paused and lowered
+his voice. "Look at the awful, the horrible, the beastly laws we pass for
+women, while we carefully keep them in a position where they cannot
+legislate for themselves. Do you know there is no law in any state&mdash;and
+no legislature would dare try to pass one&mdash;which would bind a
+ten-year-old boy to any contract which he might have been led, driven, or
+coaxed into, or have voluntarily made, if that contract should henceforth
+deprive him of all that gives to him the comforts, joys, or decencies of
+life! All men hold that such a boy is not old enough to make such a
+contract. That any one older than he, who leads him into a crime or
+misdemeanor, or the transfer of property, or his personal rights and
+liberty, is guilty of legal offence. The boy is without blame, and his
+contract is absolutely void&mdash;illegal. But in more than one state we
+hold that a little girl of ten may make the most fatal contract ever made
+by or for woman, and that she is old enough to be held legally responsible
+for her act and for her judgment. The one who leads her into it, though he
+be forty, fifty, or sixty years old, is guiltless before the law. I tell
+you, gentlemen, there is no crime possible to humanity that is as black as
+that infamous law, sought to be re-enacted by our own state at this very
+time, and which has already passed one house!" He explained, as delicately
+as he could, the full scope and meaning of the bill. Surprise,
+consternation, swept over the room. Men, a few of whom had heard of the
+bill before, but had given it scant attention, saw a horror and disgust in
+the eyes of the women which aroused for the first time in their minds, a
+flickering sense of the enormity of such a measure. No one present was
+willing that any woman should believe him guilty of approving such
+legislation, and yet Avery impressed anew upon them that the bill had
+passed one house with a good majority. On his way out of the room, a tall
+girl stepped to his side.
+</p>
+<p>
+For the moment he had not recognized her. It was Francis King. She looked
+straight at him.
+</p>
+<p>
+"Did my father vote for that bill?" she asked, without a prelude of
+greeting. Avery hesitated.
+</p>
+<p>
+"Oh, is it you, Miss King?" he asked, "I did not see you before. Do you
+come here often?"
+</p>
+<p>
+"Not very," she said, still looking at him, and with fire gathering in her
+eyes. "Did my father vote for that bill?" she repeated.
+</p>
+<p>
+"Ah&mdash;I&mdash;to tell you the truth," began Avery, but she put out her
+hand and caught firm hold of his arm.
+</p>
+<p>
+"Did my father vote for that bill?" she insisted, and Avery said: &mdash;"Yes,
+I'm sorry to say, he did, Miss King; but&mdash;so many did, you know. The
+fact is&mdash;"
+</p>
+<p>
+Her fingers grasped his arm like a vice, and her lips were drawn. "Did
+Ettie's pa?" she demanded.
+</p>
+<p>
+Avery saw the drift of her thought.
+</p>
+<p>
+"God forgive him! yes," he said, and his own eyes grew troubled and
+sympathetic.
+</p>
+<p>
+"God may forgave him if he's a mind to," exclaimed Francis, "but I don't
+want no such God around me, if he does. Any God that wants to forgive men
+for such work as that ain't fit to associate with no other kind of folks
+<i>but</i> such men; but I don't mean to allow a good little girl like
+Ettie to live in the same house with a beast if I know it. She shan't go
+home again now, not if her pa begs on his knees. He ain't fit to wipe her
+shoes. 'N my pa!" she exclaimed, scornfully. "My pa talkin' about Ettie
+being bad, and settin' bad examples for decent girls! Him a talkin'! Him
+livin' in the same house with my little sister 'n me! Him!" The girl was
+wrought to a frenzy of scorn, and contempt, and anger. They had passed out
+with the rest into the street.
+</p>
+<p>
+"Shall I walk home with you?" asked Avery. "Are you alone?"
+</p>
+<p>
+"Yes, I'm alone," she said, with a little dry sob. "I'm alone, an' I ain't
+goin' home any more. Not while he lives there. It's no decent place for a
+girl&mdash;living in the house with a man like that. I ain't goin' home.
+I'm goin' to&mdash;" It rushed over her brain that she had no other place
+to go. She held her purse in her hand; it had only two dollars and a few
+cents in it. She had bought her new dress with the rest. Her step
+faltered, but her eyes were as fiery and as hard as ever.
+</p>
+<p>
+"You'd better go home," said Avery, softly. "It will only be the harder
+for you, if you don't. I'm sorry&mdash;"
+</p>
+<p>
+She turned on him like a tigress. They were in Union Square now. "Even <i>you</i>
+think it is all right for good girls to be under the control and live with
+men like that! Even <i>you</i> think I ought to go home, an' let him boss
+me an' make rules fer me, an' me pretend to like it an believe as he does,
+an' look up to him, an' think his way's right an' best! Even <i>you!</i>"
+</p>
+<p>
+"No, no," said Avery, softly. "You must be fair, Miss King. I don't think
+it's right; but&mdash;but&mdash;I said it was best just now, for&mdash;what
+else can you do?" The girl was facing him as they stood near the fountain
+in the middle of the square.
+</p>
+<p>
+"That's just what I was meaning to show to-night when I said what I did to
+the club, of the financial dependence of women; it is their destruction;
+it destroys their self-respect; it forces them to accept a moral
+companionship which they'd scorn if they dared; it forces them to seem to
+condone and uphold such things themselves; it forces them to be the
+companions and subordinates of degraded moral natures, that hold wives and
+daughters to a code which they will not apply to themselves, and which
+they seek to make void for other wives and daughters; it&mdash;" "You told
+me to go home," she said, stubbornly. "I'm not goin'! I make money enough
+to live on. I always spent it on&mdash;on things to wear; but&mdash;but I
+can live on it, an' I'm goin' to. I ain't goin' to live in the house with
+no such a man. He ain't <i>fit</i> to live with. I won't tell ma an' the
+girls&mdash;yet; not till&mdash;"
+</p>
+<p>
+She paused, and peered toward the clock in the face of the great stone
+building across the street. "Do you think it's too late fer me t' talk a
+minute with Miss Gertrude?" she asked, with her direct gaze, again. "She'd
+let me stay there one night, I guess, n' she'd tell me&mdash;I c'd talk to
+her some."
+</p>
+<p>
+"If you won't go home," he said, slowly, "I suppose it would be best for
+you to go there, but&mdash;it is rather late. Go home for to-night, Miss
+Francis! I wish you would. Think it over to-night, please. Let me take you
+home to-night. Go to Miss Gertrude to-morrow, and talk it over." His tone
+had grown gentle and more tender than he knew. He took the hand she had
+placed on his arm in his own, and tried to turn toward her street. She
+held stubbornly back. "For my sake, to please me&mdash;because I think it
+is best&mdash;won't you go home to-night?" She looked at him again, and a
+haze came in her eyes. She did not trust herself to speak, but she turned
+toward her own street, and they walked silently down the square. His hand
+still held her own as it lay on his arm.
+</p>
+<p>
+"Thank you," he said, and pressed her fingers more firmly for an instant
+and then released them. He had taken his glove off in the hall and had not
+replaced it. When they reached the door of her father's house, she
+suddenly grasped his ungloved hand and kissed it, and ran sobbing up the
+steps and into the house without a word.
+</p>
+<p>
+"Poor girl," thought Avery, "she is not herself to-night. She has never
+respected nor loved her father much, but this was a phase of his nature
+she had not suspected before. Poor child! I hope Gertrude&mdash;" and in
+the selfishness of the love he bore for Gertrude, he allowed his thoughts
+to wander, and it did not enter his mind to place anything deeper than a
+mere emotional significance upon the conduct of the intense, tall,
+dark-eyed girl who had just left him.
+</p>
+<p>
+He did not dream that at that moment she lay face down on her bed sobbing
+as if her heart would break, and yet, that a strange little flutter of
+happiness touched her heart as she held her gloved hand against her
+flushed cheek or kissed it in the darkness. It was the hand Avery had held
+so long within his own, as it lay upon his arm. At last the girl drew the
+glove off, and going to her drawer, took out her finest handkerchief and
+lay the glove within, wrapping it softly and carefully. She was breathing
+hard, and her face was set and pained. At two o'clock she had fallen
+asleep, and under her tear-stained cheek there was a glove folded in a bit
+of soft cambric. Poor Francis King! The world is a sorry place for such as
+you, and even those who would be your best friends often deal the
+deadliest wounds. Poor Francis King! Has life nothing to offer you but a
+worn glove and a tear-stained bit of cambric? Is it true? Need it be true?
+Is there no better way? Have we built your house with but one door, and
+with no window? Smile at the fancies of your sleep, child; to-morrow will
+bring memory, reality, and tears. You are a woman now. Yesterday you were
+but an unformed, strong-willed girl. Poor Francis King! sleep late
+to-morrow, and dream happily if you can. Poor Francis King, to-morrow is
+very near!
+</p>
+<p>
+<a name="link2H_4_0013" id="link2H_4_0013">
+<!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+</p>
+<div style="height: 4em;">
+<br /><br /><br /><br />
+</div>
+<h2>
+XI.
+</h2>
+<p class="pfirst"><span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">G</span>ertrude!" called out her mother to the girl, as she passed the library
+door. "Gertrude! come in, your father and I wish to talk with you."
+</p>
+<p>
+"Committee meeting?" laughed Gertrude, as she took a seat beside her
+father. It had grown to be rather a joke in the family to speak of Mr.
+Avery's calls as committee meetings, and Mr. Foster had tried vainly to
+tease his daughter about it.
+</p>
+<p>
+"In my time," he would say, "we did not go a courting to get advice. we
+went for kisses. I never discussed any more profound topic with my
+sweetheart than love&mdash;and perhaps poetry and music. Sometimes, as I
+sit and listen to you two, I can't half believe that you are lovers. It's
+so perfectly absurd. You talk about everything on earth. It's a deal more
+like&mdash;why I should have looked upon that sort of thing as a species
+of committee meeting, in my day."
+</p>
+<p>
+Gertrude had laughed and said something about thinking that love ought to
+enter into and run through all the interests of life, and not be held
+merely as a thing apart. All women had a life to live. All would not have
+the love. So the first problem was one of life and its work. The love was
+only a phase of this. But her father had gone on laughing at her about her
+queer love-making.
+</p>
+<p>
+"Committee meeting?" asked she, again, as she glanced at her father,
+smiling dryly. Her mother answered first.
+</p>
+<p>
+"Yes&mdash;no&mdash;partly. Your father wanted to speak to you about&mdash;he
+thinks you should not be seen with, or have those girls&mdash;You tell her
+yourself, dear," she said, appealing to her husband. Mr. Foster was
+fidgeting about in his chair; he had not felt comfortable before. He was
+less so now, for Gertrude had turned her face full upon him, and her hand
+was on his sleeve.
+</p>
+<p>
+"'Well, there's nothing to tell, Gertrude," he said. "I guess you can
+understand it without a scene. I simply don't want to see those girls&mdash;that
+King girl and her friend&mdash;about here any more. It won't do. It simply
+won't do at all. You'll be talked about. Of course, I know it is all very
+kind of you, and all that, and that you don't mean any harm; but men
+always have drawn, and they always will draw, unpleasant conclusions. They
+may sympathize with that sort of girls, but they simply won't stand having
+their own women folks associate with them. The test of the respectability
+of a woman, is whether a man of position will marry her or not. A man's
+respectable if he's out of jail. A woman if she is marriageable or
+married. Now, unfortunately, that little Berton girl is neither the one
+nor the other, and its going to make talk if you are seen with her again.
+She must stay away from here, too."
+</p>
+<p>
+There had come a most unusual tone of protest into his voice as he went
+on, but he had looked steadily at a carved paper knife, which he held in
+his hand, and with which he cut imaginary leaves upon the table. There was
+a painful silence. Gertrude thought she did not remember having ever
+before heard her father speak so sharply. She glanced at her mother, but
+Katherine Foster had evidently made up her mind to leave this matter
+entirely in the hands of her husband.
+</p>
+<p>
+"Do you mean, papa, that you wish me to tell that child, Ettie Berton, not
+to come here any more, and that I must not befriend her?" asked Gertrude,
+in an unsteady voice.
+</p>
+<p>
+"Befriend her all you've a mind to," responded her father, heartily.
+"Certainly. Of course. But don't have her come here, and don't you be seen
+with her, nor the other one again. You can send James or Susan &mdash;better
+not send Susan though&mdash;send James with money or anything you want to
+give her. Your mother tells me you are paying the Berton girl's board.
+That's all right if you want to, but&mdash;your mother has told me the
+whole outrageous story, and that cashier ought to be shot, but&mdash;"
+</p>
+<p>
+"But instead of helping make the public opinion which would make him less,
+and Ettie more, respectable, you ask me to help along the present infamous
+order of things! Oh, papa! don't ask that of me! I have never willingly
+done anything in my life that I knew you disapproved. Don't ask me to help
+crush that child now, for I cannot. I cannot desert her now. Don't ask
+that of me, papa. Why do men&mdash;even you good men&mdash;make it so
+hard, so almost impossible for women to be kind to each other? What has
+Ettie done that such as we should hold her to account. She is a mere
+child. Fourteen years old in fact, but not over ten in feeling or
+judgment. She has been deceived by one who fully understood. She did not.
+And yet <i>even you</i> ask me to hold her responsible! Oh, papa, don't!"
+She slipped onto her father's knee and took his face in her hands and
+kissed his forehead. She had never in her life stood against her father or
+seemed to criticise him before. It hurt her and it vexed him. A little
+frown came on his face. "Katherine," he said, turning to his wife, "I wish
+you'd make Gertrude understand this thing rationally. <i>You</i> always
+have." Mrs. Foster glanced at her daughter and then at her husband. She
+smiled.
+</p>
+<p>
+"I always have, what dear?" she asked.
+</p>
+<p>
+"Understood these things as I do&mdash;as everyone does," said her
+husband. "You never took these freaks that Gertrude is growing into, and&mdash;"
+</p>
+<p>
+The daughter winced and sat far back on her father's knee. Her mother did
+not miss the action. She smiled at the girl, but her voice was steady, and
+less light than usual.
+</p>
+<p>
+"No, I never took freaks, as you say, but what I thought of things, or how
+I may or may not have understood them, dear, no one ever inquired, no one
+ever cared to know. That I acted like other people, and acquiesced in
+established opinions, went without saying. That was expected of me. That I
+did. Gertrude belongs to another generation, dear. She cannot be so
+colorless as we women of my time&mdash;"
+</p>
+<p>
+Her husband laughed.
+</p>
+<p>
+"Colorless, is good, by Jove! <i>You</i> colorless indeed!" He looked
+admiringly at his wife. "Why, Katherine, you have more color and more
+sense now than any half dozen girls of this generation. Colorless indeed!"
+Mrs. Foster smiled. "Don't you think my cheerful, easy reflection of your
+own shades of thought or mind have always passed current as my own?
+Sometimes I fancy that is true, and that&mdash;it is easier and&mdash;pleasanter
+all around. But&mdash;" she paused. "It was not my color, my thought, my
+opinions, myself. It was an echo, dear; a pleasant echo of yourself which
+has so charmed you. It was not I."
+</p>
+<p>
+Gertrude felt uneasy, and as if she were lifting a curtain which had been
+long drawn. Her father turned his face towards her and then toward her
+mother.
+</p>
+<p>
+"In God's name what does all this mean?" he asked. "Are you, the most
+level-headed woman in the world, intending to uphold Gertrude in this&mdash;suicidal
+policy&mdash;her&mdash;this&mdash;absurd nonsense about that girl?"
+</p>
+<p>
+Gertrude's eyes widened. She slowly arose from his knee. The revelation as
+to her father's mental outlook was, to her more sensitive and developed
+nature, much what the one had been to Francis King that night at the club.
+</p>
+<p>
+"Oh, papa," she said softly. "I am so sorry for&mdash;so sorry&mdash;for
+us all. We seem so far apart, and&mdash;"
+</p>
+<p>
+"John Martin agrees with me perfectly," said her father, hotly. "I talked
+with him to-day. He&mdash;"
+</p>
+<p>
+Gertrude glanced at her mother, and there was a definite curl upon her
+lip. "Mr. Martin," she said slowly, "is not a conscience for me. He and I
+are leagues apart, papa. We&mdash;"
+</p>
+<p>
+"More's the pity," said her father, as he arose from his chair. He moved
+toward the door.
+</p>
+<p>
+"I've said my say, Gertrude. It's perfectly incomprehensible to me what
+you two are aiming at. But what I know is this: you must <i>do</i> my way
+in this particular case, think whatever you please. You know very well I
+would not ask it except for your own good. I don't like to interfere with
+your plans, but&mdash;you must give that girl up." He spoke kindly, but
+Gertrude and her mother sat silent long after he had gone. The twilight
+had passed into darkness. Presently Katherine's voice broke the silence:&mdash;
+</p>
+<p>
+"Shall you float with the tide, daughter, or shall you try to swim up
+stream?" She was thinking of the first talk they had ever had on these
+subjects, nearly two years ago now, but the girl recognized the old
+question. She stood up slowly and then with quick steps came to her
+mother's side.
+</p>
+<p>
+"Don't try to swim with me, mamma. It only makes it harder for me to see
+you hurt in the struggle. Don't try to help me any more when the eddies
+come. Float, mamma; I shall swim. I shall! I shall! And while my head is
+above the waves that poor little girl shall not sink."
+</p>
+<p>
+She was stroking Katherine's hair, and her mother's hand drew her own down
+to a soft cheek.
+</p>
+<p>
+"Am I right, mother?" she asked, softly. "If you say I am right, it is
+enough. My heart will ache to seem to papa to do wrong, but I can bear it
+better than I could bear my own self-contempt. Am I right, mamma?"
+</p>
+<p>
+Her mother drew her hand to her lips, and then with a quick action she
+threw both arms about the girl and whispered in her ear: "I shall go back
+to the old way. Swim if you can, daughter. You are right. If only you are
+strong enough. That is the question. If only you are strong enough. I am
+not. I shall remain in the old way." There was a steadiness and calm in
+her voice which matched oddly enough with the fire in her eyes and the
+flush on her cheeks.
+</p>
+<p>
+"Little mother, little mother," murmured Gertrude, softly, as she stroked
+her mother's hand. Then she kissed her and left the room. "With her
+splendid spirit, that <i>she</i> should be broken on the wheel!" the girl
+said aloud to herself, when she had reached her own room. She did not
+light the gas, but sat by the window watching the passers-by in the
+street.
+</p>
+<p>
+"Why should papa have sent me to college," she was thinking, "where I
+matched my brains and thoughts with men, if I was to stifle them later on,
+and subordinate them to brains I found no better than my own? Why should
+my conscience be developed, if it must not be used; if I must use as my
+guide the conscience of another? Why should I have a separate and distinct
+nature in all things, if I may use only that part of it which conforms to
+those who have not the same in type or kind? I will do what seems right to
+myself. I shall not desert&mdash;"
+</p>
+<p>
+She laid her cheek in her hand and sighed. A new train of thought was
+rising. It had never come to her before.
+</p>
+<p>
+"It is my father's money. He says I may send it, but I may not&mdash;it is
+my father's money. He has the right to say how it may be used, and&mdash;and&mdash;"
+(the blood was coming into her face) "I have nothing but what he gives me.
+He wants a pleasant home; he pays for it. Susan and James, and the rest,
+he hires to conduct the labor of the house. If they do not do it to please
+him&mdash;if they are not willing to&mdash;they have no right to stay, and
+then to complain. For his social life at home he has mamma and me. If he
+wants&mdash;" She was walking up and down the room now. "Have we a right
+to dictate? We have our places in <i>his</i> home. We are not paid wages
+like James and Susan, but&mdash;but&mdash;we are given what we have; we
+are dependent. He has never refused us anything&mdash;any sum we wanted&mdash;but
+he can. It is in his power, and really we do not know but that he should.
+Perhaps we spend too much. We do not know. What can he afford? I do not
+know. What can <i>I</i> afford?" She spread her hands out before her,
+palms up, in the darkness. She could see them by the flicker of the
+electric light in the street.
+</p>
+<p>
+"They are empty," she said, aloud, "and they are untrained, and they are
+helpless. They are a pauper's hands." She smiled a little at the conceit,
+and then, slowly: "It sounds absurd, almost funny, but it is true. A
+pauper in lace and gold! I am over twenty-two. I am as much a dependent
+and a pauper as if I were in a poorhouse. Love and kindness save me! They
+have not saved Ettie, nor Francis. When the day came they were compelled
+to yield utterly, or go. They can work, and I? I am a dependent. Have I a
+right to stand against the will and pleasure of my father, when by doing
+so I compel him to seem to sustain and support that which he disapproves?
+Have I a right to do that?"
+</p>
+<p>
+She was standing close to the window now, and she put her hot face against
+the glass. "The problem is easy enough, if all think alike&mdash;if one
+does not think at all; but now? I cannot follow my own conscience and my
+father's too. We do not think alike. Is it right that I should, to buy his
+approval and smiles, violate my own mind, and brain, and heart? But is it
+right for me to violate <i>his</i> sense of what is right, while I live
+upon the lavish and loving bounty which he provides?" And so, with her
+developed conscience, and reason, and individuality, Gertrude had come to
+face the same problem, which, in its more brutal form, had resulted so
+sorrowfully for the two girls whom she had hoped to befriend. The ultimate
+question of individual domination of one by another, with the purse as the
+final appeal&mdash;and even this strong and fortunate girl wavered. "Shall
+I swim, after all? Have I the right to try?" she asked herself.
+</p>
+<p>
+<a name="link2H_4_0014" id="link2H_4_0014">
+<!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+</p>
+<div style="height: 4em;">
+<br /><br /><br /><br />
+</div>
+<h2>
+XII.
+</h2>
+<p class="pfirst"><span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">W</span>hen Francis King told Mr. Avery that she could and would leave her
+father's home and live upon the money she earned, and had heretofore
+looked upon as merely a resource to save her pride, she did not take into
+consideration certain very important facts, not the least of which was,
+perhaps, that her presence at the store was not wholly a pleasant thing
+for the cashier to contemplate under existing circumstances.
+</p>
+<p>
+Francis King was not a diplomat. The cashier was not a martyr. These two
+facts, added to the girl's scornful eyes, rendered the position in the
+trimming department far less secure than she had grown to believe.
+</p>
+<p>
+So when she came to the little room which Gertrude Foster had provided as
+a temporary home for Ettie Berton, she felt that she came as a help and
+protector and not at all as a possible encumbrance.
+</p>
+<p>
+"I've had a terrible blow-out with pa," she said, bitterly. "I can't go
+home any more if I wanted to&mdash;and I don't want to. I told him what I
+thought of him, and of your&mdash;and of the kind of men that make mean
+laws they are ashamed to have their own folks know about and live by. He
+was awful mad. He said laws was none o' my business, and he guessed men
+knew best what was right an' good for women."
+</p>
+<p>
+"Of course they do," said Ettie with her ever ready acquiescence. "I
+reckon you didn't want t' deny <i>that,</i> did you Fan? You 'n your pa
+must a' shook hands for once anyhow," she laughed. "How'd it feel? Didn't
+you like agreein' with him once?" Francis looked at the child&mdash;this
+pitiful illustration of the theory of yielding acquiescence; this
+legitimate blossom of the tree of ignorance and soft-hearted dependence;
+this poor little dwarf of individuality; this helpless echo of masculine
+measures, methods, and morals&mdash;and wondered vaguely why it was that
+the more helpless the victim, the more complete her disaster, the more
+certain was she to accept, believe in, and support the very cause and root
+of her undoing.
+</p>
+<p>
+Francis King's own mental processes were too disjointed and ill-formulated
+to enable her to express the half-formed thoughts that came to her. Her
+heart ached for her little friend to whom to-day was always welcome, and
+to whom to-morrow never appeared a possibility other than that it would be
+sunshiny, and warm, and comfortable.
+</p>
+<p>
+Francis saw a certain to-morrow which should come to Ettie, far more
+clearly than did the child herself, and seeing, sighed. Her impulse was to
+argue the case hotly with Ettie, as she had done with her father; but she
+looked at her face again, and then, as a sort of safety-valve for her own
+emotion, succinctly said: "Ettie Berton, you are the biggest fool I ever
+saw."
+</p>
+<p>
+Ettie clapped her hands.
+</p>
+<p>
+"Right you are, says Moses!" she exclaimed, laughing gleefully, "and you
+like me for it. Folks with sense like fools. Sense makes people so awful
+uncomfortable. Say, where'd you get that bird on your hat? Out 'o stock?
+Did that old mean thing make you pay full price? Goodness! how I do wish I
+could go back t' store!"
+</p>
+<p>
+"Ettie, how'd you like for me to come here an live with you? Do you 'spose
+Miss Gertrude would care?"
+</p>
+<p>
+"Hurrah for Cleveland!" exclaimed Ettie, springing to her feet and
+throwing her arms about Francis. "Hurrah for Grant! Gracious, but I'm
+glad! I'm just so lonesome I had to make my teeth ache for company," she
+rattled on. "Miss Gertrude 'll be glad, too. She said she wisht I had
+somebody 't take care of me. But, gracious! I don't need that. They ain't
+nothing to do but just set still n' wait. It's the waitin' now that makes
+me so lonesome. I want t' hurry 'n get back t' the store, 'n&mdash;"
+</p>
+<p>
+She noticed Francis's look of surprise, not unmixed with frank scorn; but
+she did not rightly interpret it.
+</p>
+<p>
+"My place ain't gone is it, Fan?" she asked, in real alarm. "He said he'd
+keep it for me."
+</p>
+<p>
+"Ettie Berton, you are the biggest fool I ever saw," said Francis, again,
+this time with a touch of hopelessness and pathos in her voice, and at
+that moment there was a rap at the door. It was one of the cash girls from
+the store. She handed Francis a note, and while Ettie and the visitor
+talked gaily of the store, Francis read and covered her pale face with her
+trembling hands. She was discharged "owing to certain necessary changes to
+be made in the trimming department." She went and stood by the window with
+her back to the two girls. She understood the matter perfectly, and she
+did not dare trust herself to speak. It could not be helped, she thought,
+and why let Ettie know that she had brought this disaster upon her friend,
+also. Francis was trying to think. She was raging within herself. Then it
+came to her that she had boldly asserted that she would help protect and
+support Ettie. Now she was penniless, helpless, and homeless herself.
+There were but two faces that stood out before her as the faces of those
+to whom she could go for help and counsel, and she was afraid to go to
+even these. She was ashamed, humiliated, uncertain.
+</p>
+<p>
+She supposed that Gertrude Foster could help her if she would. She had
+that vague miscomprehension of facts which makes the less fortunate look
+upon the daughters of wealth and luxury and love as possessed of a magic
+wand which they need but stretch forth to compass any end. She did not
+dream that at that very moment Gertrude Foster was revolving exactly the
+same problem in her own mind, and reaching out vainly for a solution.
+"What shall I do? what ought I to do? what can I do?" were questions as
+real and immediate to Gertrude, in the new phase of life and thought which
+had come to her, as they were to Francis in her extremity. It is true that
+the greater part of the problem in Francis's mind dealt with the physical
+needs of herself and her little friend, and with her own proud and fierce
+anger toward her father and the cashier. It is also true that these
+features touched Gertrude but lightly; but the highest ideals, beliefs,
+aspirations, and love of her soul were in conflict within her, and the
+basis of the conflict was the same with both girls. Each had, in following
+the best that was within herself, come into violent contact with
+established prejudice and prerogative, and each was beating her wings, the
+one against the bars of a gilded cage draped lovingly in silken threads,
+and the other was feeling her helplessness where iron and wrath unite to
+hold their prey.
+</p>
+<p>
+The other face that arose before Francis brought the blood back to her
+face. She had not seen him since she had kissed his hand that night, and
+she wondered what he thought of her. She felt ashamed to go to him for
+help. She had talked so confidently to him that night of her own powers,
+and of her determination that Ettie should not again live under the same
+roof, and be subject to the will of the father whom she insisted was a
+disgrace to the child. "I reckon <i>he</i> could get me another place to
+work&mdash;in a store," she thought. "But&mdash;" She shook her head, and
+a fierce light came into her eyes. She had learned enough to know that a
+girl who had left home under the wrath of her father, would best not
+appeal for a situation under the protection and recommendation of a young
+gentleman not of her own caste or condition in life. She thought of all
+this and of what it implied, and it seemed to her that her heart would
+burst with shame and rage.
+</p>
+<p>
+Was she not a human being? Were there not more reasons than one why
+another human unit should be kind to her and help her? If she were a boy
+all this shame would be lifted from her shoulders, all these suspicions
+and repression and artificial barriers would be gone. She wondered if she
+could not get a suit of men's clothes, and so solve the whole trouble. No
+one would then question her own right of individual and independent action
+or thought. No one would then think it commendable for her to be a useless
+atom, subordinating her whole individuality to one man, to whose mental
+and moral tone she must bend her own, until such time as he should turn
+her over to some other human entity, whereupon she would be required to
+readjust all her mental and moral belongings to accommodate the new
+master. How comfortable it would be, she thought, to go right on year
+after year, growing into and out of herself. Expanding her own nature, and
+finding the woman of to-morrow the outcome of the girl of yesterday. She
+had once heard a teacher explain about the chameleon with its capacity to
+adjust itself to and take on the color of other objects. It floated into
+her mind that girls were expected to be like chameleons. Instead of being
+John King's daughter, with, of course, John King's ideas, status and
+aspirations, or William Jones's wife&mdash;now metamorphosed into a tepid
+reflex of William Jones himself&mdash;she thought how pleasant it would be
+to continue to be Francis King, and not feel afraid to say so. The idea
+fascinated her. Yes, she would get a suit of men's clothes, and henceforth
+have and feel the dignity of individual responsibility and development.
+She slipped out of the room and into the street. She thought she would
+order the clothes as if "for a brother just my size." She could pay for a
+cheap suit. She paused in front of a shop window, and the sight of her own
+face in a glass startled her. She groaned aloud. She knew as she looked
+that she was too handsome to pass for a man. It was a woman's face. Then,
+too, how could she live with and care for Ettie? "No, <i>I'll</i> have to
+go to <i>them</i> for help," she said, desperately to herself, and
+turning, faced Selden Avery coming across the street. The color flew into
+her face, but she saw at a glance that he did not think of their last
+meeting&mdash;or, at least, not of its ending. "I was just wishing I could
+see you and Miss Gertrude," she said, bluntly, her courage coming back
+when he paused, recognizing that she wished to speak further with him than
+a mere greeting.
+</p>
+<p>
+"Were you?" he said, smiling. "Our thoughts were half-way the same then,
+for I was wishing to see her, too."
+</p>
+<p>
+She thought how pleasant and soft his voice was, and she tried to modify
+the tones of her own.
+</p>
+<p>
+"I was goin't' ask you&mdash;her&mdash;what to do about&mdash;about
+something," she said, falteringly.
+</p>
+<p>
+"So was I," he smiled back, showing his perfect teeth. "She will have to
+be very, very wise to advise us both, will she not? Shall we go to her
+now? And together? Perhaps our united wisdom may solve both your problem
+and mine. Three people ought to be three times as wise as one, oughtn't
+they?"
+</p>
+<p>
+<a name="link2H_4_0015" id="link2H_4_0015">
+<!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+</p>
+<div style="height: 4em;">
+<br /><br /><br /><br />
+</div>
+<h2>
+XIII.
+</h2>
+<p class="pfirst"><span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">W</span>hen Gertrude came forward to meet Selden Avery and Francis King, she
+felt the disapproving eyes of her father fixed upon her. It was a new and
+a painful sensation. It made her greeting less free and frank than usual,
+and both Avery and Francis felt without being able to analyze it.
+</p>
+<p>
+"She don't like me to be with him," thought Francis, and felt humiliated
+and hurt.
+</p>
+<p>
+"Surely Gertrude cannot doubt me," was Avery's mental comment, and a sore
+spot in his heart, left by a comment made at the club touching Gertrude's
+friendship for this same tall, fiery girl at his side, made itself felt
+again. John Martin exchanged glances with Gertrude's father. Avery saw,
+and seeing, resented what he believed to be its meaning.
+</p>
+<p>
+The three men bowed rather stiffly to each other. Francis felt that she
+was, somehow, to blame. She wished that she had not come. She longed to
+go, but did not know what to say nor how to start. The situation was
+awkward for all. Gertrude wished for and yet dreaded the entrance of her
+mother.
+</p>
+<p>
+Avery felt ashamed to explain, but he began as if speaking to Gertrude and
+ended with a look of challenge at the two men facing him. "I chanced to
+meet Miss King in the street and as both of us stood in need of advice
+from you," he was trying to smile unconcernedly, "we came up the avenue
+together."
+</p>
+<p>
+There was a distinct look of displeasure and disapproval upon Mr. Foster's
+face, while John Martin took scant pains to conceal his disgust. He, also,
+had heard, and repeated, the club gossip to Gertrude's father.
+</p>
+<p>
+"If good advice is what you want particularly," said Mr. Foster, slowly,
+"I don't know but that I might accommodate you. I hardly think Gertrude is
+in a position to&mdash;to&mdash;"
+</p>
+<p>
+The bell rang sharply and in an instant the little cash girl from the
+store rushed in gasping for breath.
+</p>
+<p>
+"Come quick! quick! Ettie is killed! She fell down stairs and then&mdash;oh,
+something <i>awful</i> happened! I don't know what it was. The doctor is
+there. He sent me here, 'cause Ettie cried and called for you!" She was
+looking at Gertrude, who started toward the door.
+</p>
+<p>
+"Go back and tell the doctor that Miss Foster cannot come," said her
+father, rising.
+</p>
+<p>
+"Certainly not, I should hope," remarked John Martin under his breath;
+"the most preposterous idea!" Gertrude paused. She was looking at her
+father with appeal in her face. Then her eyes fell upon the tense lips and
+piercing gaze of Francis King who, half way to the street door, had turned
+and was looking first from one to the other.
+</p>
+<p>
+"Papa," said Gertrude, "don't say that. I must go. It is right that I
+should, and I must." Then with outstretched hands, "I want to go, papa! I
+need to. Don't&mdash;"
+</p>
+<p>
+"You will do nothing of the kind, Gertrude. It is outrageous. What
+business have you got with that kind of girls? I <i>asked</i> you to stop
+having them come here, and I told you to let them alone. I am perfectly
+disgusted with Avery, here, for&mdash;" He had thought Francis was gone.
+The drapery where she had turned to hear what Gertrude would say hid her
+from him. "<i>With that kind of girls!</i>" was ringing in her ears. "I
+hope when you are married <i>that</i> is not the sort of society he is
+going to surround you with. It&mdash;" Avery saw for the first time what
+the trouble was. He stepped quickly to Gertrude's side and slipped one arm
+about her. Then he took the hand she still held toward her father.
+</p>
+<p>
+"My wife shall have her own choice. She is as capable as I to choose. I
+shall not interfere. She shall not find me a master, but a comrade.
+Gertrude is her own judge and my adviser. That is all I ask, and it is all
+I assume for myself as her husband&mdash;when that time comes," he added,
+with her hand to his lips.
+</p>
+<p>
+Mrs. Foster entered attired for the street. The unhappy face of Francis
+King with wide eyes staring at Gertrude met her gaze. She had heard what
+went before. "Get your hat, Gertrude," she said. "I will go with you. It
+might take too long to get a carriage. Francis, come with me; Gertrude
+will follow us. Come with her, my son," she said, to Selden Avery, and a
+spasm of happiness swept over his face. She had never called him that
+before. He stooped and kissed her, and there were tears in the young man's
+eyes as Mrs. Foster led Francis King away.
+</p>
+<p>
+"I suppose it was all my fault to begin with," said John Martin, when the
+door had closed behind them. "It all started from that visit to the
+Spillinis. The only way to keep the girls of this age in&mdash;" he was
+going to say "in their place," but he changed to 'where they belong,' "is
+not to let them find out the facts of life. Charity and religion did well
+enough to appease the consciences of women before they had colleges, and
+all that. I didn't tell you so at the time, but I always did think it was
+a mistake to send Gertrude to a college where she could measure her wits
+with men. She'll never give it up. She don't know where to stop."
+</p>
+<p>
+Mr. Foster lighted a cigar&mdash;a thing he seldom did in the
+drawing-room. He handed one to John Martin.
+</p>
+<p>
+"I guess you're right, John," he said, slowly. "She can't seem to see that
+graduation day ended all that. It was Katherine's idea, sending her there,
+though. I wanted her to go to Vassar or some girl's school like that. I
+don't know what to make of Katherine lately; when I come to think of it, I
+don't know what to make of her all along. She seems to have laid this plan
+from the first, college and all; but I never saw it. Sometimes I'm afraid&mdash;sometimes
+I almost think&mdash;" He tapped his forehead and shook his head, and John
+Martin nodded contemplatively, and said: "I shouldn't wonder if you are
+right, Fred. Too much study is a dangerous thing for women. The structure
+of their brains won't stand it. It is sad, very sad;" and they smoked in
+sympathetic silence, while James had hastened below stairs to assure Susan
+that he thought he'd catch himself allowing his sweetheart or wife to
+demean herself and disgrace him by having anything to do with a person in
+the position of Ettie Berton. And Susan had little doubt that James was
+quite right, albeit Susan felt moderately sure that in a contest of wits&mdash;after
+the happy day&mdash;she could be depended upon to get her own way by hook
+or by crook, and Susan had no vast fund of scruple to allay as to method
+or motive. Deception was not wholly out of Susan's line. Its necessity did
+not disturb her slumbers.
+</p>
+<p>
+<a name="link2H_4_0016" id="link2H_4_0016">
+<!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+</p>
+<div style="height: 4em;">
+<br /><br /><br /><br />
+</div>
+<h2>
+XIV.
+</h2>
+<p class="pfirst"><span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">S</span>ome one had sent for Ettie's father. They told him that she was dying,
+and he had come at once. Mr. King had gone with him. The latter gentleman
+did not much approve of his colleague's soft-heartedness in going. He did
+not know where his own daughter was, and he did not care. She had faced
+him in her fiery way, and angered him beyond endurance the morning after
+she had learned of the awful bill which he had not really originated, but
+which he had induced Mr. Berton to present, at the earnest behest of a
+social lion whose wont it was to roar mightily in the interest of virtue,
+but who was at the present moment engaged in lobbying vigorously in the
+interest of vice.
+</p>
+<p>
+When Francis entered the sick-room with Mrs. Foster, and found the two men
+there, she gave one glance at the pallid, unconscious figure on the bed,
+and then demanded, fiercely: "Where is the cashier? Why didn't you bring
+him and&mdash;and the rest of you who help make laws to keep him where he
+is, an'&mdash;an' to put Ettie where she is? Why didn't y' bring <i>all</i>
+of your kind that helped along the job?"
+</p>
+<p>
+Mrs. Foster had been bending over the child on the bed. She turned.
+</p>
+<p>
+"Don't, Francis," she said, trying to draw the girl away. She was standing
+before the two men, who were near the window. "Don't, Francis. That can do
+no good. They did not intend&mdash;" "No'm," began Berton, awkwardly;
+"no'm, I didn't once think o' <i>my</i> girl, n&mdash;" He glanced
+uneasily at his colleague and then at the face on the bed.
+</p>
+<p>
+"Or you would never have wanted such a law passed, I am sure," said
+Katherine.
+</p>
+<p>
+"No'm, I wouldn't," he said, doggedly, not looking at his colleague.
+</p>
+<p>
+"Don't tell me!" exclaimed Francis. "You don't none of you care for her.
+He only cares because it is his girl an' disgraces <i>him</i>. What did he
+do? Care for her? No, he drove her off. That shows who he's a-carin' for.
+He ain't sorry because it hurts or murders her. He never tried to make it
+easy for her an' say he was a lot more to blame an'&mdash;an'&mdash;a big
+sight worse every way than she was. He's a-howling now about bein' sorry;
+but he's only sorry for himself. He'd a let her starve&mdash;an' so'd <i>he</i>,"
+she said, pointing to her father. She was trembling with rage and
+excitement. "I hope there is a hell! I jest hope there is! I'll be willin'
+to go to it myself jest t' see&mdash;"
+</p>
+<p>
+The door opened softly and Gertrude entered, and behind her stood Selden
+Avery.
+</p>
+<p>
+"That kind of girls" floated anew into Francis's brain, and the sting of
+the words she had heard Gertrude's father utter drove her on. "I wish to
+God, every man that ever lived could be torn to pieces an'&mdash;an' put
+under Ettie's feet. They wouldn't be fit for her to walk on&mdash;none of
+'em! She never did no harm on purpose ner when she understood; an' men&mdash;men
+jest love to be mean!"
+</p>
+<p>
+She felt the utter inadequacy of her words, and a great wave of feeling
+and a sense of baffled resentment swept over her, and she burst into
+tears. Gertrude tried to draw her out of the room. At the door she sobbed:
+"Even <i>her</i> father's jest like the rest, only&mdash;only he says it
+easier. He&mdash;"
+</p>
+<p>
+"Francis, Francis," said Gertrude, almost sternly, when they were outside
+the sickroom. "You must not act so. It does no good, and&mdash;and you are
+partly wrong, besides. If&mdash;"
+</p>
+<p>
+"I didn't mean <i>him</i>," said the girl, with her handkerchief to her
+eyes. "I didn't mean <i>him.</i> I know what he thinks about it. I heard
+him talk one night at the club. He talked square, an' I reckon he is
+square. But <i>I</i> wouldn't take no chances. I wouldn't marry the Angel
+Gabriel an' give him a chance to lord it over me!"
+</p>
+<p>
+Gertrude smiled in spite of herself, and glanced within through the open
+door. There was a movement towards where the sick girl lay. "If you go in,
+you must be quiet," she said to Francis, and entered. Ettie had been
+stirring uneasily. She opened her great blue eyes, and when she saw the
+faces about her, began to sob aloud.
+</p>
+<p>
+"Don't let pa scold me. I'll do his way. I'll do&mdash;anything anybody
+wants. I like to. The store&mdash;" She gave a great shriek of agony. She
+had tried to move and fell back in a convulsion. She was only partly
+conscious of her suffering, but the sight was terrible enough to
+sympathetic hearts, and there was but one pair of dry eyes in the room.
+The same beady, stern, hard glitter held its place in the eyes of Mr.
+King.
+</p>
+<p>
+"Serves her right," he was thinking. "And a mighty good lesson. Bringin'
+disgrace on a good man's name!"
+</p>
+<p>
+The tenacity with which Mr. King adhered to the belief in, and solicitude
+for, a good name, would have been touching had it not been noticeable to
+the least observant that his theory was, that the custody of that
+desirable belonging was vested entirely in the female members of a family.
+Nothing short of the most austere morals could preserve the family
+'scutcheon if he was contemplating one side. Nothing short of a
+long-continued, open, varied, and obtrusive dishonesty and profligacy of a
+male member could even dull its lustre. It was a comfortable code for a
+part of its adherents.
+</p>
+<p>
+Had his poor, colorless, inane wife ever dared to deviate from the beaten
+path of social observance, Mr. King would have talked about and felt that
+"his honor" was tarnished. Were he to follow far less strictly the code,
+he would not only be sure that his own honor was intact, but if any one
+were to suggest to him the contrary, or that he was compromising her
+honor, he would have looked upon that person as lacking in what he was
+pleased to call "common horse-sense." He was in no manner a hypocrite. His
+sincerity was undoubted. He followed the beaten track. Was it not the
+masculine reason and logic of the ages, and was not that final? Was not
+all other reason and logic merely a spurious emotionalism? morbid?
+unwholesome? irrational?
+</p>
+<p>
+No one would gainsay that unless it were a lunatic or a woman, which was
+much the same thing&mdash;and since the opinion of neither of these was
+valuable, why discuss or waste time with them? That was Mr. King's point
+of view, and he was of the opinion that he had a pretty good voting
+majority with him, and a voting majority was the measure of value and
+ethics with Representative King&mdash;when the voting majority was on his
+side.
+</p>
+<p>
+When the last awful agony came to poor little Ettie Berton, and she
+yielded up, in pathetic terror and reluctant despair, the life which had
+been moulded for her with such a result almost as inevitable as the death
+itself, a wave of tenderness and remorse swept over her father. He buried
+his face in the pillow beside the poor, pretty, weak, white face that
+would win favor and praise by its cheerful ready acquiescence no more, and
+wept aloud. This impressed Representative King as reasonable enough, under
+all the circumstances, but when Ettie's father intimated later to Francis
+that he had been to blame, and that, perhaps, after all, Ettie <i>was</i>
+only the legitimate result of her training and the social and legal
+conditions which he had helped to make and sustain, Representative King
+curled his lip scornfully and remarked that in his opinion Tom Berton
+never could be relied on to be anything but a damned fool? In the long
+run. He was a splendid "starter." Always opened up well in any line; but
+unless someone else held the reins after that the devil would be to pay
+and no mistake.
+</p>
+<p>
+Francis heard; and, hearing, shut tight her lips and with her tear-swollen
+eyes upon the face of her dead friend, swore anew that to be disgraced by
+the presence of a father like that was more than she could bear. She could
+work or she could die; but there was nothing on this earth, she felt, that
+would be so impossible, so disgraceful, as for her to ever again
+acknowledge his authority as her guide.
+</p>
+<p>
+"Come home with me to-night, Francis," said Mrs. Foster. "We will think of
+a plan&mdash;"
+</p>
+<p>
+"I'm goin' to stay right here," said the girl, with a sob and a shiver;
+for she had all the horror and fear of the dead that is common to her type
+and her inexperience. "I'm goin' to stay right here. I can't go home, an'
+I'm discharged at the store. Ettie told me her rent was paid for this
+month. I'll take her place here an'&mdash;an' try to find another place to
+work."
+</p>
+<p>
+Mrs. Foster realized that to stay in that room would fill the girl with
+terror, but she felt, too, that she understood why Francis would not go
+home with her. "That kind of girls" from Mr. Foster's lips had stung this
+fierce, sensitive creature to the quick. A week ago she would have been
+glad indeed to accept Katherine Foster's offer. Now she would prefer even
+this chamber of death, where the odors made her ill, and the thoughts and
+imaginings would insure to her sleepless nights of unreasoning fear. Her
+father did not ask her to go home. Representative King believed in
+representing. Was not his family a unit? And was he not the figure which
+stood for it? It had never been his custom to ask the members of his
+household to do things. He told them that he wanted certain lines of
+action fallowed. That was enough. The thought and the will of that ideal
+unit, "the family," vested in the person of Mr. King and he proposed to
+represent it in all things.
+</p>
+<p>
+If by any perverse and unaccountable mental process there was developed a
+personality other than and different from his own, Representative King did
+not propose to be disturbed in his home-life&mdash;as he persisted in
+calling the portion of his existence where he was able to hold the iron
+hand of power ever upon the throat of submission&mdash;to the extent of
+having such unseemly personality near him.
+</p>
+<p>
+In her present mood he did not want Francis at home. Representative King
+was a staunch advocate of harmony and unity in the family life. He was of
+opinion that where timidity and dependence say "yes" to all that power
+suggests, that there dwelt unity and harmony. That is to say, he held to
+this idea where it touched the sexes and their relation to each other in
+what he designated an ideal domestic life. In all other relations he held
+far otherwise&mdash;unless he chanced to be on the side of power and had a
+fair voting majority. Representative King was an enthusiastic admirer of
+submission&mdash;for other people. He thought that there was nothing like
+self-denial to develop the character and beauty of a nature. It is true
+that his scorn was deep when he contemplated the fact that John Berton
+"had no head of his own," but then, John Berton was a man, and a man ought
+to have some self-respect. He ought to develop his powers and come to
+something definite. A definite woman was a horror. Her attractiveness
+depended upon her vagueness, so Representative King thought; and if a
+large voting majority was not with him in open expression, he felt
+reasonably sure that he could depend upon them in secret session, so to
+speak. Representative King was not a linguist, but he could read between
+the social and legal lines very cleverly indeed, and finer lines of
+thought than these were not for Representative King.
+</p>
+<p>
+And so he did not ask Francis to go home. "When she gets ready to go my
+way and says so, she can come," he thought.
+</p>
+<p>
+"When that dress gets shabby and she's a little hungry, she'll conclude
+that my way is good enough for her." He smiled at the vision of the future
+"unity and harmony" which should thus be ushered into his home by means of
+a little judiciously applied discipline, and Francis took her dead
+friend's place as a lodger and tried to think, between her spasms of
+loneliness and fears, what she should do on the morrow.
+</p>
+<p>
+<a name="link2H_4_0017" id="link2H_4_0017">
+<!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+</p>
+<div style="height: 4em;">
+<br /><br /><br /><br />
+</div>
+<h2>
+XV.
+</h2>
+<p class="pfirst"><span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">F</span>rancis told me once at the Guild that she can make delicious bread and
+pastry," said Gertrude, as they drove home. "I wonder if we could not
+start her in a little shop of her own. She has the energy and vim to build
+herself a business. I doubt if she will every marry&mdash;with her
+experience one can hardly wonder&mdash;and there is a long life before
+her. Her salvation will be work; a career, success."
+</p>
+<p>
+"A career in a pastry shop seems droll enough," smiled her mother, "but&mdash;"
+</p>
+<p>
+"I think I might influence the club to take a good deal of her stuff.
+We've a miserable pastry cook now," said Avery. "That would help her to
+get a start, and the start is always the hard part, I suppose, in a thing
+like that."
+</p>
+<p>
+"That would be a splendid chance. If the members liked her things, perhaps
+they would get their wives to patronize her, too," said Gertrude, gaily.
+"I'm so glad you thought of that, but then you always think of the right
+thing," she added, tenderly. They all three laughed a little, and Avery
+slipped his arm about her.
+</p>
+<p>
+"Do I?" he asked in a voice tremulous with happiness. "Do I, Darling? I'm
+so glad you said that, for I've just been thinking that&mdash;that I don't
+want to go back to Albany without you, and&mdash;and the new session
+begins in ten weeks. Darling, will you go with me? May she, my mother?" he
+asked, catching Mrs. Foster's hand in his own. The two young people were
+facing her. She sat alone on the back seat of the closed carriage. The
+street lights were beginning to blossom and flicker. The rays fell upon
+the mother's face as they drove. Her eyes were closed, and tears were on
+her cheeks.
+</p>
+<p>
+"Forgive me, mother," said Avery, tenderly. "Forgive me! You have gone
+through so much to-day. I should have waited; but&mdash;but I love her so.
+I need her so&mdash;I need her to help me think right. Can you
+understand?"
+</p>
+<p>
+Mrs. Foster moved to one side and held out both arms to her daughter.
+</p>
+<p>
+"Sit by me," she said, huskily, and Gertrude gathered her in her young,
+strong arms.
+</p>
+<p>
+"Can I understand?" half sobbed Katherine from her daughter's shoulder.
+"Can I understand? Oh, I do! I do! and I am so happy for you both; but she&mdash;she
+is <i>my</i> daughter, and it is so hard to let her go&mdash;even to you!
+It is so hard!"
+</p>
+<p>
+Gertrude could not speak. She tried to look at her lover, but tears filled
+her eyes. She was holding her mother's hand to her lips.
+</p>
+<p>
+"Dear little mamma," she whispered; "dear little mamma, I shall never go
+if it makes you unhappy&mdash;never, if it breaks my heart. But mamma, I
+love you more because I love him; and&mdash;"
+</p>
+<p>
+"I know, I know," said Katherine, trying to struggle out of her heartache
+which held back and beyond itself a tender joy for these two. "But love is
+so selfish. I <i>am</i> glad. I am glad for you both&mdash;but&mdash;oh,
+my daughter, I love you, <i>I</i> love you!" she said, and choked down a
+sob to smile in the girl's eyes.
+</p>
+<p>
+Mr. Foster was waiting for them in the library. They were late. He had
+been thinking.
+</p>
+<p>
+"Well, I'm tremendously glad you're back," he said brightly, kissing his
+wife, and then he took Gertrude in his arms. "Sweetheart," he said,
+smiling down into her eyes, "if I seemed harsh to-day, I'm sorry. I only
+did it because I thought it was for your own good. You know that."
+</p>
+<p>
+"Why, papa," she said, with her cheek against his own; "of course I know.
+Of course I understand. We all did. You don't mind if we did not see your
+way? You&mdash;"
+</p>
+<p>
+"The girl is dead, dear," said Mrs. Foster, touching her husband's arm,
+"and&mdash;let us not talk of that now, to&mdash;to these, our children.
+They want your&mdash;they want to ask&mdash;they are going to be married
+in ten weeks?"
+</p>
+<p>
+"The dickens!" exclaimed her father, and held Gertrude at arm's length.
+"Is that so, Sweetheart?" There was a twinkle in his eyes, and he lifted
+her chin with one finger and then kissed her. "The dickens! Well, all I've
+got to say is, I'm sorry for old Martin and the rest of us," and he
+grasped Selden Avery's hand. "I hope you'll give up that legislative
+foolishness pretty soon and come back to town and live with civilized
+people in a civilized way. It'll be horribly lonely in New York without
+Gertrude, but&mdash;oh, well, its nature's way. We're all a lot of
+robbers. I stole this little woman away from her father, and I'm an
+unrepentent thief yet, am I not?" and he kissed his wife with the air of a
+man who feels that life is well worth living, no matter what its
+penalties, so long as she might be not the least of them.
+</p>
+<div style="height: 6em;">
+<br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />
+</div>
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+<pre>
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Pray You, Sir, Whose Daughter?, by
+Helen H. Gardener
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+</html>
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+Project Gutenberg's Pray You, Sir, Whose Daughter?, by Helen H. Gardener
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Pray You, Sir, Whose Daughter?
+
+Author: Helen H. Gardener
+
+Release Date: March 16, 2013 [EBook #37355]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK PRAY YOU, SIR, WHOSE DAUGHTER? ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by David Widger
+
+
+
+
+
+
+PRAY YOU, SIR, WHOSE DAUGHTER?
+
+By Helen H. Gardener
+
+
+R. F. Fenno & Company
+
+9 and 11 East 16th Street
+
+New York
+
+1892
+
+
+I saw a woman sleeping. In her sleep she dreampt Life stood before her,
+and held in each hand a gift--in the one Love, in the other Freedom. And
+she said to the woman, "Choose!"
+
+And the woman waited long; and she said: "Freedom!" And Life said, "Thou
+hast well chosen. If thou hadst said, 'Love,' I would have given thee
+that thou didst ask for; and I would have gone from thee, and returned
+to thee no more. Now, the day will come when I shall return. In that
+day I shall bear both gifts in one hand." I heard the woman laugh in her
+sleep.
+
+Olive Schreener's Dreams.
+
+
+
+DEDICATED
+
+With the love and admiration of the Author,
+
+To Her Husband
+
+Who is ever at once her first, most severe, and most sympathetic critic,
+whose encouragement and interest in her work never flags; whose abiding
+belief in human rights, without sex limitations, and in equality of
+opportunity leaves scant room in his great soul to harbor patience with
+sex domination in a land which boasts of freedom for all, and embodies
+its symbol of Liberty in the form of the only legally disqualified and
+unrepresented class to be found upon its shores.
+
+
+
+
+PREFACE.
+
+In the following story the writer shows us what poverty and dependence
+are in their revolting outward aspects, as well as in their crippling
+effects on all the tender sentiments of the human soul. Whilst the many
+suffer for want of the decencies of life, the few have no knowledge of
+such conditions.
+
+They require the poor to keep clean, where water by landlords is
+considered a luxury; to keep their garments whole, where they have
+naught but rags to stitch together, twice and thrice worn threadbare.
+The improvidence of the poor as a valid excuse for ignorance, poverty,
+and vice, is as inadequate as is the providence of the rich, for their
+virtue, luxury, and power. The artificial conditions of society are
+based on false theories of government, religion, and morals, and not
+upon the decrees of a God.
+
+In this little volume we have a picture, too, of what the world would
+call a happy family, in which a naturally strong, honest woman is
+shrivelled into a mere echo of her husband, and the popular sentiment of
+the class to which she belongs. The daughter having been educated in a
+college with young men, and tasted of the tree of knowledge, and,
+like the Gods, knowing good and evil, can no longer square her life by
+opinions she has outgrown; hence with her parents there is friction,
+struggle, open revolt, though conscientious and respectful withal.
+
+Three girls belonging to different classes in society; each illustrates
+the false philosophy on which woman's character is based, and each in a
+different way, in the supreme moment of her life, shows the necessity of
+self-reliance and self-support.
+
+As the wrongs of society can be more deeply impressed on a large class
+of readers in the form of fiction than by essays, sermons, or the facts
+of science, I hail with pleasure all such attempts by the young writers
+of our day. The slave has had his novelist and poet, the farmer his,
+the victims of ignorance and poverty theirs, but up to this time the
+refinements of cruelty suffered by intelligent, educated women, have
+never been painted in glowing colors, so that the living picture could
+be seen and understood. It is easy to rouse attention to the grosser
+forms of suffering and injustice, but the humiliations of spirit are not
+so easily described and appreciated.
+
+A class of earnest reformers have, for the last fifty years, in the
+press, the pulpit, and on the platform, with essays, speeches, and
+constitutional arguments before legislative assemblies, demanded the
+complete emancipation of women from the political, religious, and social
+bondage she now endures; but as yet few see clearly the need of larger
+freedom, and the many maintain a stolid indifference to the demand.
+
+I have long waited and watched for some woman to arise to do for her sex
+what Mrs. Stowe did for the black race in "Uncle Tom's Cabin," a book
+that did more to rouse the national conscience than all the glowing
+appeals and constitutional arguments that agitated our people during
+half a century. If, from an objective point of view, a writer could
+thus eloquently portray the sorrows of a subject race, how much more
+graphically should some woman describe the degradation of sex.
+
+In Helen Gardener's stories, I see the promise, in the near future,
+of such a work of fiction, that shall paint the awful facts of woman's
+position in living colors that all must see and feel. The civil and
+canon law, state and church alike, make the mothers of the race a
+helpless, ostracised class, pariahs of a corrupt civilization. In view
+of woman's multiplied wrongs, my heart oft echoes the Russian poet who
+said: "God has forgotten where he hid the key to woman's emancipation."
+Those who know the sad facts of woman's life, so carefully veiled
+from society at large, will not consider the pictures in this story
+overdrawn.
+
+The shallow and thoughtless may know nothing of their existence, while
+the helpless victims, not being able to trace the causes of their
+misery, are in no position to state their wrongs themselves.
+
+Nevertheless all the author describes in this sad story, and worse
+still, is realized in everyday life, and the dark shadows dim the
+sunshine in every household.
+
+The apathy of the public to the wrongs of woman is clearly seen at this
+hour, in propositions now under consideration in the Legislature of New
+York. Though two infamous bills have been laid before select committees,
+one to legalize prostitution, and one to lower the age of consent, the
+people have been alike ignorant and indifferent to these measures. When
+it was proposed to take a fragment of Central Park for a race course, a
+great public meeting of protest was called at once, and hundreds of men
+hastened to Albany to defeat the measure.
+
+But the proposed invasion of the personal rights of woman, and the
+wholesale desecration of childhood has scarce created a ripple on the
+surface of society. The many do not know what laws their rulers are
+making, and the few do not care, so long as they do not feel the iron
+teeth of the law in their own flesh. Not one father in the House or
+Senate would willingly have his wife, sister, or daughter subject to
+these infamous bills proposed for the daughters of the people. Alas! for
+the degradation of sex, even in this republic. When one may barter away
+all that is precious to pure and innocent childhood at the age of ten
+years, you may as well talk of a girl's safety with wild beasts in the
+tangled forests of Africa, as in the present civilizations of England
+and America, the leading nations on the globe.
+
+Some critics say that every one knows and condemns these facts in our
+social life, and that we do not need fiction to intensify the public
+disgust. Others say, Why call the attention of the young and the
+innocent to the existence of evils they should never know. The majority
+of people do not watch legislative proceedings.
+
+To keep our sons and daughters innocent, we must warn them of the
+dangers that beset their path on every side.
+
+Ignorance under no circumstances ensures safety. Honor protected by
+knowledge, is safer than innocence protected by ignorance.
+
+A few brave women are laboring to-day to secure for their less capable,
+less thoughtful, less imaginative sisters, a recognition of a true
+womanhood based on individual rights. There is just one remedy for the
+social complications based on sex, and that is equality for woman in
+every relation in life.
+
+Men must learn to respect her as an equal factor in civilization, and
+she must learn to respect herself as mother of the race. Womanhood is
+the great primal fact of her existence; marriage and maternity, its
+incidents.
+
+This story shows that the very traits of character which society (whose
+opinions are made and modified by men) considers most important and
+charming in woman to ensure her success in social life, are the very
+traits that ultimately lead to her failure.
+
+Self-effacement, self-distrust, dependence and desire to please,
+compliance, deference to the judgment and will of another, are what make
+young women, in the opinion of these believers in sex domination, most
+agreeable; but these are the very traits that lead to her ruin.
+
+The danger of such training is well illustrated in the sad end of Ettie
+Berton. When the trials and temptations of life come, then each one
+must decide for herself, and hold in her own hands the reins of action.
+Educated women of the passing generation chafe under the old order of
+things, but, like Mrs. Foster in the present volume, are not strong
+enough to swim up stream. But girls like Gertrude, who in the college
+curriculum have measured their powers and capacities with strong young
+men and found themselves their equals, have outgrown this superstition
+of divinely ordained sex domination. The divine rights of kings, nobles,
+popes, and bishops have long been questioned, and now that of sex is
+under consideration and from the signs of the times, with all other
+forms of class and caste, it is destined soon to pass away.
+
+Elizabeth Cady Stanton
+
+
+
+
+PRAY YOU, SIR, WHOSE DAUGHTER?
+
+
+
+
+I
+
+To say that Mrs. Foster was cruel, that she lacked sympathy with the
+unfortunate, or that she was selfish, would be to state only the dark
+half of a truism that has a wider application than class or sex could
+give it; a truism whose boundary lines, indeed, are set by nothing short
+of the ignorance of human beings hedged in by prejudice and handicapped
+by lack of imagination. So when she sat, with dainty folded hands whose
+jeweled softness found fitting background on the crimson velvet of her
+trailing gown, and announced that she could endure everything associated
+with, and felt deep sympathy for, the poor if it were not for the
+besetting sin of uncleanliness that found its home almost invariably
+where poverty dwelt, it would be unjust to pronounce her hard-hearted or
+base.
+
+"It is all nonsense to say that the poor need be so dirty," she
+announced, as she held her splendid feather fan in one hand and caressed
+the dainty tips of the white plumes with the tips of fingers only less
+dainty and white.
+
+"I have rarely ever seen a really poor man, woman, or child who was at
+the same time really clean looking in person, and as to clothes--"
+
+She broke off with an impatient and disgusted little shrug, as if to
+say--what was quite true--that even the touch of properly descriptive
+words held for her more soilure than she cared to bear contact with.
+
+John Martin laughed. Then he essayed to banter his hostess, addressing
+his remarks meanwhile to her daughter.
+
+"One could not imagine your mamma a victim of poverty and hunger, much
+less of dirt, Miss Gertrude," he began slowly; "but even that sumptuous
+velvet gown of hers would grow to look more or less--let us say--rusty,
+in time, I fear, if it were the only costume she possessed, and she were
+obliged to eat, cook, wash, iron, sew, and market in it."
+
+The two ladies laughed merrily at the droll suggestion, and Miss
+Gertrude pursed up her lips and developed a decided squint in her eyes
+as she turned them upon the folds of her mother's robe. Then she took up
+Mr. Martin's description where the laugh had broken in upon it.
+
+"Too true, too true," she drawled; "and if she dusted the furniture
+a week or so with that fan, I'm afraid it would lose more or less
+of its--gloss. Mamma quite prides herself upon the delicate
+peach-fuzz-bloom, so to speak, of those feathers. Just look at them!"
+The girl reached over and took the fan from her mother's lap. She spread
+the fine plumes to their fullest capacity, and held them under the rays
+of the brass lamp that stood near their guest. Then she made a flourish
+with it in the direction of the music stand, as if she were intent upon
+whisking the last speck of dust from the sheets of Tannhauser that lay
+on its top A little cry of alarm and protest escaped Mrs. Foster's lips
+and she stretched oat her hand to rescue the beloved fan.
+
+"Gertrude! how can you?" She settled back comfortably against the
+cushions of the low divan with her rescued treasure once more waving in
+gentle gracefulness before her.
+
+"Oh, no," she protested. "Of course one could not work or live
+constantly in one or two gowns and look fresh, but one could look and be
+clean and--and whole. A patch is not pretty I admit, but it is a decided
+improvement upon a bare elbow."
+
+"I don't agree with you at all," smiled her guest; "I don't believe
+I ever saw a patch in all my life that would be an improvement
+upon--upon--" He glanced at the lovely round white arms before him, and
+all three laughed. Mrs. Foster thought of how many Russian baths and
+massage treatments had tended to give the exquisite curve and tint to
+her arm.
+
+"Then beside," smiled Mr. Martin, "a rent or hole may be an immediate
+accident, liable to happen to the best of us. A patch looks like
+premeditated poverty." Gertrude laughed brightly, but her mother did not
+appear to have heard. She reverted to the previous insinuation.
+
+"Oh, well; that is not fair! You know what I mean. I'm talking of elbows
+that burst or wear out--not about those that never were intended to be
+in. Then, besides, it is not the elbow I object to; it is the hole
+one sees it through. _It_ tells a tale of shiftlessness and personal
+untidiness that saps all sympathy for the poverty that compelled the
+long wearing of the garment."
+
+"Why, my dear Mrs. Foster," said Martin, slowly, "I wonder if you have
+any idea of a grade of poverty that simply can't be either whole or
+clean. Did--?"
+
+"I'll give up the whole, but I won't give in on the clean. I can easily
+see how a woman could be too tired, too ill, or too busy to mend a
+garment; I can fancy her not knowing how to sew, or not having thread,
+needles, and patches; but, surely, surely, Mr. Martin, no one living is
+too poor to keep clean. Water is free, and it doesn't take long to take
+a bath. Besides--"
+
+Gertrude looked at her mother with a smile. Then she said with her
+sarcastic little drawl again:--
+
+"Russian, or Turkish?"
+
+"Well, but fun' and nonsense aside, Gertrude," said her mother, "a plain
+hot bath at home would make a new creature out of half the wretches one
+sees or reads of, and--"
+
+"Porcelain lined bath-tub, hot and cold water furnished at all hours.
+Bath-room adjoining each sleeping apartment," laughed Mr. Martin. "What
+a delightful idea you have of abject poverty, Mrs. Foster. I do wish
+Fred could have heard that last remark of yours. I went with his clerk
+one day to collect rents down in Mulberry Street. He had the collection
+of the rents for the Feedour estate on his hands--"
+
+"What's that about the rents of the Feedour estate?" inquired the head
+of the house, extending his hand to their guest as he entered. Mrs.
+Foster put out her hand and her husband touched the tips of her fingers
+to his lips, while Gertrude slipped her arm through her father's and
+drew him to a seat beside her. Her eyes were dancing, and she showed a
+double row of the whitest of teeth.
+
+"Oh, Mr. Martin was just explaining to mamma how your clerk collects
+rent for the porcelain bath-tubs in the Feedour property down in
+Mulberry Street. Mamma thinks that bath-rooms should be free--hot and
+cold water, and all convenient appointments."
+
+Fred Foster looked at their guest for a moment, and then both men burst
+into a hearty laugh.
+
+"I don't see anything to laugh at," protested Mrs. Foster. "Unless you
+are guying me for thinking Mr. Martin in earnest about the tubs being
+rented. I suppose, of course, the bath-rooms go with the apartments,
+and one rent covers the whole of it. In which case, I still insist that
+there is no reason why the poor can't be clean, and if they have only
+one suit of clothes, they can wash them out at night and have them dry
+next morning."
+
+The men laughed again.
+
+"Gertrude, has your mamma read her essay yet before the Ladies' Artistic
+and Ethical Club on the 'Self-Inflicted Sorrows of the Poor?'" asked Mr.
+Foster, pinching his daughter's chin, and allowing a chuckle of humorous
+derision to escape him as he glanced at their guest.
+
+"No," said the girl, a trifle uneasily; "Lizzie Feedour read last time.
+Mamma's is next, and she has read her paper to me. It is just as good
+as it can be. Better than half the essays used to be at college, not
+excepting Mr. Holt's prize thesis on economics. I wish the poor people
+could hear it. She speaks very kindly of their faults even while
+criticising them. You--"
+
+"Don't visit the tenement houses of the Feedour estate, dear, until
+after you read your paper to the club," laughed her husband, "or your
+essay won't take half so well. College theses and cold facts are not
+likely to be more than third cousins; eh, Martin? I'm sure the part on
+cleanliness would be easier for her to manage in discussion before she
+visited the Spillini family, for example."
+
+"Which one is that, Fred?" asked Mr. Foster.
+
+Martin, a droll twinkle in his eye. "The family of eight, with Irish
+mother and Italian father, who live in one room and take boarders?"
+
+There was a little explosive "oh" of protest from Gertrude, while her
+mother laughed delightedly.
+
+"Mr. Martin, you are so perfectly absurd. Why didn't you say that the
+room was only ten by fifteen feet and had but one window!"
+
+"Because I don't think it is quite so big as that, and there is no
+outside window at all," said he, quite gravely. "And their only bath-tub
+for the entire crowd is a small tin basin also used to wash dishes in."
+
+"W-h-a-t!" exclaimed Mrs. Foster, as if she were beginning to suspect
+their guest's sanity, for she recognized that his mood had changed from
+one of banter.
+
+The portiere was drawn aside, and other guests announced. As Mrs. Foster
+swept forward to meet them, Gertrude grasped her father's arm and looked
+into his eyes with something very like terror in her own. "Papa," she
+said hastily, in an intense undertone; "Papa, is he in earnest? Do the
+Feedour girls collect rent from such awful poverty as that? Do eight
+human beings eat and sleep--live--in one room anywhere in a Christian
+country? Does--?"
+
+Her father took both of her hands in his own for a moment and looked
+steadily into her face.
+
+"Hundreds of them, darling," he said, gently. "Don't stare at Miss
+Feedour that way. Go speak to her. She is looking toward us, and your
+mother has left her with Martin quite long enough. He is in an ugly
+humor to-night. Go--no, come," he said, slipping her hand in his arm and
+drawing her forward through the long rooms to where the group of guests
+were greeting each other with that easy familiarity which told of
+frequent intercourse and community of interests and social information.
+
+
+
+
+II.
+
+Two hours later Gertrude found herself near a low window seat upon
+which sat John Martin. She could not remember when he had not been her
+father's closest friend, and she had no idea why his moods had changed
+so of late. He was much less free and fatherly with her. She wondered
+now if he despised her because she knew so little of the real woes of
+a real world about her, while she, in common with those of her station,
+sighed so heavily over the needs of a more distant or less repulsive
+human swarm.
+
+"Will you take me to see the Spillini family some day soon, Mr. Martin,"
+she asked, seating herself by his side. "Papa said that you were telling
+the truth--were not joking as I thought at first."
+
+Her eyes were following the graceful movements of Lizzie Feedour, as
+that young lady turned the leaves of a handsome volume that lay on
+the table before her, and a gentleman with whom she was discussing its
+merits and defects.
+
+"I don't believe the call would be a pleasure on either side," said Mr.
+Martin, brusquely, "unless we sent word the day before and had some of
+the family moved out and a chair taken in."
+
+The girl turned her eyes slowly upon him, but she did not speak. The
+color began to climb into his face and dye the very roots of his hair.
+She wondered why. Her own face was rather paler than usual and her eyes
+were very serious.
+
+"You don't want to take me," she said. "I wonder why men always try to
+keep girls from knowing things--from learning of the world as it is--and
+then blame them for their ignorance! You naturally think I am a very
+silly, light girl, but--"
+
+A great panic overtook John Martin's heart. He could hardly keep back
+the tears. He felt the blood rush to his face again, but he did not know
+just what he said.
+
+"I do not--I do not! You are--I--I--should hate to be the one to
+introduce you to such a view of life. I was an old fool to talk as I did
+this evening. I--"
+
+"Oh, that is it!" exclaimed Gertrude, relieved. "You found me ignorant,
+and content because I was ignorant, and you regret that you have struck
+a chord--a serious chord--where only make-believe or merry ones were
+ever struck between us before."
+
+John Martin fidgeted.
+
+"No, it is not that I would like to strike the first serious chord for
+you--in your heart, Gertrude."
+
+He had called her Gertrude for years. Indeed the Miss upon his lips was
+of very recent date, but there was a meaning in the name just now as
+he spoke it that gave the girl a distinct shock. She felt that he was
+covering retreat in one direction by a mendacious advance in another.
+She arose suddenly.
+
+"Lizzie Feedour is looking her best tonight," she said. "She grows
+handsomer every day."
+
+She had moved forward a step, but he caught the hand that hung by her
+side. She faced him with a look of mingled protest and surprise in her
+face; but when her eyes met his, she understood.
+
+"Gertrude, darling!" was all he could say. This time the blood dyed her
+face and a mist blinded her for a moment. She remembered feeling glad
+that her back was turned to everyone but him, and that the window
+drapery hid his face from the others, for the intensity of appeal
+touched with the faintest shimmer of happiness and hope told so plain
+a story that she felt, rather than thought, how absurd it would look to
+anyone else. She did not realize why it seemed less absurd to her.
+She drew her hand away and the color died out of his face. Her own was
+burning. She had turned to leave the room when his disappointed face
+swam before her eyes again. She put out her hand quickly as if bidding
+him good-night and drew him toward the door. He moved beside her as in a
+dream.
+
+"After you take me to see the Spillini family," she said, trying to
+appear natural to any eyes that might be upon her, "we--I--" They had
+reached the portiere. She drew it aside and he stepped beyond.
+
+"There is no companionship between two people who look upon life so
+unequally. Those who know all about the world that contains the Spillini
+family and those who know nothing of such a world are very far apart in
+thought and in development There is no mental comradeship. I feel very
+far from my father to-night for the first time--mamma and I. I have
+looked at her all the evening in wonder--and at him. I wonder how they
+have contrived to live so far apart. How could he help sharing his views
+and knowledge of life with her, if he thinks her and wishes her to be
+his real companion and comrade. I could not live that way."
+
+She seemed to have forgotten the newer, nearer question, in
+contemplating the problem that had startled her earlier in the evening.
+John Martin thought it was all a bit of kind-hearted acting to cover
+his retreat. He dropped her hand. A man-servant was holding his coat. He
+thrust his arms in and took his hat.
+
+"Will you take me to see the Spillini family _tomorrow?_" asked a soft
+voice from the portiere. A great wave of joy rushed over John Martin. He
+did not know why.
+
+"Yes," he said, in a tone that was so distinctly happy that the
+man-servant stared. The folds of the portiere fell together and John
+Martin passed out onto Fifth Avenue, in an ecstasy.
+
+He is willing to share his knowledge of life with me--of life as he sees
+and knows it--she thought, as she lay awake that night. He does not wish
+to live on one plane and have me live on another. That looks like real
+love. Poor mamma! Poor papa! How far apart they are. To him life is a
+real thing. He knows its meaning and what it holds. She only knows a
+shell that is furbished up and polished to attract the eye of children.
+It is as if he were reading a book to her in a language he understood
+and she did not. The sound would be its entire message to her, while he
+gathered in and kept to himself all the meaning of the words--the force
+of the thoughts. How can they bear such isolation. How can they? she
+thought with a new feeling of passionate protest that mingled with her
+dreams.
+
+
+
+
+III.
+
+"Sure an' I'd like to die meself if dyin' wasn't so costly," remarked
+Mrs. Spillini, as she gazed with tear-stained eyes at the little body
+that occupied the only chair in the dismal room. "Do the best we kin,
+buryin' the baby is goin' to cost more than we made all winter out o'
+all three boarders. Havin' the baby cost a dreadful lot altogether, an'
+now it's dyin's a dreadful pull agin."
+
+Gertrude Foster opened her Russian leather purse and Mrs. Spillini's
+eyes brightened shrewdly. There was no need for the hesitancy and choice
+of words that gave the young girl so much care and pain. Familiarity
+with all the mean and gross of life from childhood until one is the
+mother of six living and four dead children, does not leave the finest
+edge of sentiment and pride upon the poverty-cursed victims of fate.
+
+"If you would allow me to leave a mere trifle of money for you to use
+for the baby, I don't--it is only--" began Gertrude; but the ready hand
+had reached out for the money and a quick "Thanky mum; much obliged" had
+ended the transaction.
+
+"I shall not tell mamma _that"_, thought Gertrude, and she did not look
+at John Martin. It was her first glimpse into a grade of life to which
+all things, even birth and death, take on a strictly commercial aspect;
+where not only the edge of sentiment is dulled by dire necessity, but
+where the sentiment itself is buried utterly beneath the incrustations
+of an ignorance that is too dumb and abject to learn, and a poverty that
+is too insistent to recognize its own ignorance and degradation.
+
+"Won't you set down?" inquired Mrs. Spillini, as with a sudden movement
+she slid the small corpse onto the floor under the edge of the table.
+"I'd a' ast you before, but--"
+
+"O, don't!" exclaimed the girl; but before her natural impulse to stoop
+and gather up the small bundle had found action possible, John Martin
+had placed it on the table.
+
+"Oh, Lord; don't!" exclaimed the woman, in sudden dismay. "The
+boarders'd kick if they was to see it _there_. Boarders is
+different from the family. We could ate affen the table afther, but
+boarders--boarders'd kick."
+
+"Could--do you think of anything else we could do for you?" inquired
+Gertrude, faintly, as she held open the door and tried to think she was
+not dizzy and sick from the dreadful, polluted air, and the shock of the
+revelation, with all that it implied, before her.
+
+Four dirty faces, and as many ragged bodies, were too close to her for
+comfort. There was a vile stew cooking on the stove. The air was heavy
+and foul with it Gertrude distinctly felt the greasy moisture on her kid
+gloves as they touched each other.
+
+"No, I don't know's they's anything _more_ you can do," replied
+the passive, hopeless wreck of what it was almost sacrilege to call
+womanhood. "I don't know's they's anything more you could _do_ unless
+you could let the boarders come in now. They ain't got but a little over
+ten minutes to eat in an' dinner's ready," she replied, as she lifted
+the pot of steaming stuff into the middle of the table and laid two tin
+plates, a large knife and a bunch of iron forks and spoons beside it.
+
+"Turn that chair to the wall," she added sharply to one of the children,
+who hastened to obey the command. "They'll _all_ have to stand up to it
+this time. I ain't a goin' to shift that baby round no more till it's
+buried, now that I _kin_ bury it. Take this side of the table, Pete. I
+don't feel like eatin.' You kin have my place 'n the ole man ain't here.
+Let go of that tin cup, you trillin' young one. All the coffee they is,
+is in that. Have a drink, Mike?" she asked, passing the coveted cup to
+the second boarder. Gertrude was half-way down the dark hallway, and
+John Martin held her arm firmly lest she step into some unseen trap or
+broken place in the floor.
+
+When they reached the street door she turned to him with wide eyes.
+
+"Great God," she moaned, "and people go to church and pray and thank
+God--and collect rent from such as they! Men offer premiums to mothers
+and fathers for large families of children--to be brought up like that?
+In a world where that is possible! Oh, I think it is wicked, wicked,
+wicked, to allow it--any of it--all of it! How can you?"
+
+John Martin looked hopeless and helpless.
+
+"I don't," he said, in pathetic self-defense, feeling somehow that the
+blame was personal.
+
+"Oh, I don't mean you!" she exclaimed, almost impatiently. "I mean all
+who know it--who have known and understood it all along. How could men
+allow it? How dared they? And to think of encouraging such people to
+marry--to bring into a life like that such swarms of helpless children.
+Oh, the sin and shame and outrage of it!"
+
+John Martin was dazed that she should look upon it as she did. He was
+surprised that she spoke so openly. He did not fully comprehend the
+power and force of real conviction and feeling overtaken in a sincere
+and fearlessly frank nature by such a knowledge for the first time.
+
+"I should not have brought you here," he said, feebly, as they entered
+the waiting carriage which her mother had insisted she should take if
+she would go "slumming," as she had expressed it.
+
+She turned an indignant face upon him.
+
+"Why?" she demanded.
+
+He tried to say something about a shock to her nerves, and such sights
+and knowledge being not for women.
+
+"I had begun to feel that he respected me--believed in me--wanted, in
+truth and not merely in name, to share life with me," she thought, "but
+he does not: it is all a sham. He wants someone who shall _not_ share
+life with him--not even his mental life."
+
+"You would come here with papa, would you not?" she asked, presently.
+"You would talk over, look at, think of the problems of life with
+him,"--her voice began to tremble.
+
+"Certainly," he said, "but that is different. It--"
+
+"Yes, it is different; quite different. You love papa, and it would be a
+pain to you to keep your mental books locked up from him. You respect
+papa, and you would not be able to live a life of pretense with him.
+You--"
+
+"Gertrude! Oh, darling! I love you. I love you. You know that," he said,
+grasp ing both her hands and covering them with kisses. She snatched
+them away, and covered her face with them to hide the tears which were a
+surprise and shock to herself.
+
+"I should not have taken her there," he thought. "I'm a great fool."
+
+He did not at all comprehend the girl's point of view, and she resented
+his. He could not imagine why, and her twenty years of inexperience in
+handling such a view of life as had suddenly grown up within her, made
+her unable to express quite fully why she did resent his assumption that
+she should not be allowed to use her heart or brain beyond the limits
+set for their exercise by conventional theory. She could not express
+in words why she felt insulted and outraged in her self-respect that he
+should assume that life was and should be led by her, upon a distinctly
+different and narrower plane than his own. She knew that she could not
+accept his explanation, that it was his intense love that wished to
+shield her from knowledge of all that was ugly--of all the deeper and
+sadder meanings of human experience; but she felt unequal to making
+him understand by any words at her command how far from her idea of an
+exalted love such an assumption was.
+
+That he should sincerely believe that as a matter of course much that
+was and should be quite common in his own life should be kept from,
+covered up, blurred into indistinction to her, came to her with a shock
+too sudden and heavy for words. She had built an exalted ideal of
+absolute mental companionship between those who loved. She had always
+thought that one day she should pass through the portals of some vast
+building by the side of a husband to whom all within was new as it would
+be to her. She had fancied that neither spoke; that both read the
+tablets of architecture--and of human legend on every face--so nearly
+alike that by a glance of the eye she could say to him, "I know what you
+are thinking of all this. It stirs such or such a memory. It strikes the
+chord that holds these thoughts or those." But she read as plainly now
+that this man who thought he loved her, whom she had grown to feel she
+might one day love, had no such conception of a union of lives. To him
+marriage would mean a physical possession of a toy more or less
+valuable, more or less to be cherished or to be set under a glass case,
+whenever his real life, his real thoughts, his deeper self were stirred.
+These were to be kept for men--his mentally developed equals. She
+understood full well that if she could have said this to him he would
+have been shocked, would have resented such a contemptuous
+interpretation of what he truly believed to be a wholly respectful love,
+offered upon wholly respectful terms. But to her, it seemed the mere
+tossing down of a filbert to a pretty kitten, that it might amuse him
+for a few moments with its graceful antics. When he tired of the kitten,
+or bethought him of the serious duties of life, he could turn the key
+and count on finding the amusing little creature to play with again next
+day in case he cared to relax himself with a sight of its gambols. She
+resented such a view of the value of her life. She was humiliated and
+indignant. The perfectly apparent lack of comprehension on his part of
+any lapse of respect in attitude toward her, the entire unconsciousness
+of the insult to her whole nature, in his assumption of a divine right
+of individual growth and development to which she had no claim, stung
+her beyond all power of speech. The very fact that he had no
+comprehension of the affront himself, added to it its utterly hopeless
+feature. The love of a man offered on such terms is an insult, she said,
+over and over to herself; but aloud she said nothing.
+
+She had heard, vaguely, through her tumult of feeling, his terms of
+endearment, his appeals to her tenderness and--alas! unfortunately for
+him--his apologies for having taken her to such a place. She became
+distinctly aware of these latter first and it steadied her. They had
+reached Washington Square.
+
+"Yes, that revelation in Mulberry Street was a horrible shock to me,"
+she said, looking at him for the first time since they had entered the
+carriage; "but, do you know, I think there are more shocking things than
+even that done in the name of love every day--things as heartless and
+offensively uncomprehending of what is fine and true in life as that
+wretched woman's conduct with the lifeless form of her baby."
+
+He recognized a hard ring in her voice, but her eyes looked kind and
+gentle.
+
+"How do you mean?" he asked, touching her hand as it lay on her empty
+purse in her lap.
+
+"I don't believe I could ever make you understand what I mean, we are so
+hopelessly far apart," she said, a little sadly. "That an explanation
+is necessary--that is the hopeless part. That that poor woman did not
+comprehend that her conduct and callousness were shocking--_that_ was
+the hopeless part. To make you understand what I mean would be like
+making her understand all the hundreds of awful things that her conduct
+meant to us. If it is not in one's nature to comprehend without words,
+then words are useless."
+
+His vehement protests stirred her sympathy again.
+
+"You say that love brings people near together. Do you know I am
+beginning to think that nothing could be a greater calamity than that?
+Drawn together by a love that rests on a physical basis for those who
+refuse to allow it root in a common sympathy and a community of thought
+it must fail sooner or later. A humbled acceptance of the crumbs of
+her husband's life, or a resentful endurance of it, may result from
+the accursed faithfulness or the pitiful dependence of wives, but
+surely--surely no greater calamity could befall her and no worse fate
+lie in wait for him."
+
+Her lover stared at her, pained and puzzled. When they reached her door
+he grasped her hand.
+
+"I thought you loved me last night, and I went away in an ecstasy of
+hope. Today--"
+
+"Perhaps I do love you," she said; "but I do not respect you, because
+you do not respect me." He made a quick sound of dissent, but she
+checked him. "You do not respect womanhood; you only patronize
+women--you only patronize me. I could not give you a right to do that
+for life. Good-bye. Don't come in this time. Wait. Let us both think."
+
+"Let us both think," he repeated, as he started down the street.
+"Think! Think what? I had no idea that Gertrude would be so utterly
+unreasonable. It is a girl's whim. She'll get over it, but it is
+deucedly uncomfortable while it lasts."
+
+"Mamma," said Gertrude, when she reached her mother's pretty room on the
+third floor. "Mamma, do you suppose if a girl really and truly loved a
+man that she would stop to think whether he had a high or a low estimate
+of womanhood?"
+
+The girl's mother looked up startled. She was quite familiar with what
+she had always termed the "superhumanly aged remarks" of her daughter,
+but the new turn they had taken surprised her.
+
+"I don't believe she would, Gertrude. Why? Are you imagining yourself
+in love with some man who is not chivalrous toward women?" Mrs. Foster
+smiled at the mere idea of her daughter caring much for any man. She
+thought she had observed her too closely to make a mistake in the
+matter.
+
+Gertrude evaded the first question.
+
+"I once heard a very brilliant man say--what I did not then
+understand--that chivalry was always the prelude to imposition. I
+believe I don't care very especially for chivalry. Fair play is better,
+don't you think so?" She did not pause for a reply, but began taking off
+her long gloves.
+
+"Which would you like best from papa, flattery or square-toed, honest
+truth?"
+
+Her mother laughed.
+
+"Gertrude, you are perfectly ridiculous. The institution of marriage, as
+now established, wouldn't hang together ten minutes if your square-toed,
+honest truth, as you call it, were to be tried between husbands and
+wives. Most wives are frightened nearly to death for fear they will
+become acquainted with the truth some day. They don't want it. They were
+not--built for it." Gertrude began to move about the room impatiently.
+Her mother smiled at her and went on: "Don't you look at it that way?
+No? Well, you are young yet. Wait until you've been married three
+years--"
+
+The girl turned upon her with an indignant face. Then suddenly she threw
+her arms about her mother's neck.
+
+"Poor mamma, poor mamma," she said. "Didn't you find out for three years
+_after?_ How did you bear it? I should have committed suicide. I--"
+
+"Oh, no you wouldn't!" said her mother, with a bitter little inflection.
+"They all talk that way. Girls all feel so, if they know enough to feel
+at all--to think at all. They rage and wear out their nerves--as you are
+doing now, heaven knows why--and the beloved husband calls a doctor
+and buys sweets and travels with the precious invalid, and never once
+suspects that he is at the bottom of the whole trouble. It never dawns
+upon him that what she is dying for is a real and loyal companionship,
+such as she had fondly dreamed of, and not at all for sea air. It
+doesn't enter his mind that she feels humiliated because she knows that
+a great part of his life is a sealed book to her, and that he wishes to
+keep it so."
+
+She paused, and her daughter stroked her cheek. This was indeed a
+revelation to the girl. She had been wholly deceived by her mother's gay
+manner all these years. She was taking herself sharply to task now.
+
+"But by and by when she succeeds in killing all her self-respect; when
+she makes up her mind that the case is hopeless, and that she must
+expect absolutely no frankness in life beyond the limits of conventional
+usage prescribed for purblind babies; after she arrives at the point
+where she discovers that her happiness is a pretty fiction built on air
+foundation--well, daughter, after that she--she strives to murder all
+that is in her beyond and above the petty simpleton she passes for--and
+she succeeds fairly well, doesn't she?"
+
+There was a cynical smile on her lips, and she made an elaborate bow to
+her daughter.
+
+"Oh, mamma, I beg your pardon!" exclaimed the girl, almost frightened.
+"I truly beg your pardon! If--you--I--"
+
+Her mother looked steadily out of the window. Then she said, slowly,
+"How did you come to find all this out _before_ you were married, child?
+Have I not done a mother's duty by you in keeping you in ignorance, so
+far as I could, of all the struggles and facts of life--of--"
+
+The bitter tone was in her voice again. Gertrude was hurt by it, it was
+so full of self-reproach mingled with self-contempt. She slipped her arm
+about her mother's waist.
+
+"Don't, mamma," she said. "Don't blame yourself like that. I'm sure you
+have always done the best possible--the--"
+
+Her mother laughed, but the note was not pleasant.
+
+"Yes, I always did the lady-like thing,--nothing. I floated with the
+tide. Take my advice, daughter,--float. If you don't, you'll only
+tire yourself trying to swim against a tide that is too strong for you
+and--and nothing will come of it. Nothing at all." The girl began to
+protest with the self-confidence of youth, but her mother went on. She
+had taken the bit in her teeth to-day and meant to run the whole race.
+
+"Do you suppose I did not know about the Spillini family? About the
+thousands of Spillini families? Do you suppose I did not know that the
+rent of ten such families--their whole earnings for a year--would be
+spent on--on a pretty inlaid prayer-book like this?" She tapped the
+jeweled cross and turned it over on her lap. The girl's eyes were wide
+and almost fear-filled as she studied her handsome care-free mother in
+her new mood.
+
+"Did you really suppose I did not know that this gem on the top of the
+cross is dyed with the life-blood of some poor wretch, and that this one
+represents the price of the honor of a starving girl?" She shivered, and
+the girl drew back. "Did you fancy me as ignorant and as--happy--as
+I have talked? Don't you know that it is the sole duty of a well-bred
+woman to be ignorant--and happy? Otherwise she is morbid!" She
+pronounced the word affectedly, and then laughed a bitter little laugh.
+
+"Don't, mamma," said the girl, again. "I quite understand now, quite--"
+She laid her head on her mother's bosom and was silent. Presently she
+felt a tear drop on her hair. She put her hand up to her mother's cheek
+and stroked it.
+
+"The game went against you, didn't it, mamma?" she said softly. "And you
+were not to blame." She felt a little shiver run over her mother's frame
+and a sob crushed back bravely that hurt her like a knife. Presently two
+hands lifted the girl's face.
+
+"You don't despise me, daughter? In my position the price of a woman's
+peace is the price of her own self-respect. I did not lose the game. I
+gave it up!"
+
+Gertrude kissed her on eyes and lips. "Poor mamma, poor mamma," she said
+softly, "I wonder if I shall do the same!" For the first time since she
+entered the room, the daughter appeared to appeal for, rather than to
+offer, sympathy and strength. Her mother was quick to respond.
+
+"If you never learn to love anyone very much, daughter, you may hope
+to keep your self-respect. If you do you will sell it all--for his.
+And--and--"
+
+"Lose both at last?" asked the girl, hoarsely. Katherine Foster closed
+her eyes for a moment to shut out her daughter's face.
+
+"Will you ever have had his?" she asked, with her eyes still closed.
+"Do men ever truly respect their dupes or their inferiors? Do you truly
+respect anyone to whom you are willing to deny truth, honor, dignity?
+Is it respect, or only a tender, pitying love we offer an intellectual
+cripple--one whose mental life we know to be, and desire to keep,
+distinctly below our own? Do--" She opened her eyes and they rested on
+an onyx clock. She laughed. "Come, daughter," she said, "it is time to
+dress for the Historical Club's annual dinner. You know I am one of the
+guests of honor to-day. They honor me so truly that I am not permitted
+to join the club or be ranked as a useful member at all. My work they
+accept--flatter me by praising in a lofty way; but I can have no status
+with them as an historian--I am a woman!"
+
+Gertrude sprang to her feet. Her eyes flashed fire.
+
+"Don't go! I wouldn't allow them to--" The door opened softly. Mr.
+Foster's face appeared.
+
+"Why, dearie, aren't you ready for the Historical Club? I wouldn't have
+you late for anything. You know I, as the vice-president, am to respond
+to the toast on, 'Woman: the highest creation, and God's dearest gift to
+mankind.' It wouldn't look well if you were not there."
+
+"No, dear," she said, without glancing at Gertrude. "It would not look
+well. I'll be ready in a minute. Will you help me, Gertrude?"
+
+"Yes," said the girl, and her deft fingers flew at the task. When the
+door closed behind her mother and the carriage rolled away, she threw
+herself face down on the bed and ground her teeth. "Shall I float, or
+try to swim up stream?" she said, to herself. "Will either one pay for
+what it will cost? Shall--"
+
+"Miss Gertrude, dinner is served," said the maid; and she went to the
+table alone.
+
+"To think that a visit to the Spillini family should have led to all
+this," she thought, and felt that life, as it had been, was over for
+her.
+
+Aloud she said:--
+
+"James, the berries, please, and then you may go."
+
+And James told Susan that in his opinion the man that got Miss Gertrude
+was going to get the sweetest, simplest, yieldingest girl he ever saw
+except one, and Susan vowed she could not guess who that one was.
+
+But apparently James did not wholly believe her, for he essayed to
+sportively poke her under the chin with an index finger that very
+evidently had seen better days prior to having come into violent contact
+with a base-ball, which, having a mind and a curve of its own, had
+incidentally imparted an eccentric crook to the unfortunate member.
+
+"Don't you dast t'touch me with that old pot-hook, er I'll scream,"
+exclaimed Susan, dodging the caress. "I don't see no sense in a feller
+gettin' hisself all broke up that a way," and Susan, from the opposite
+side of the butler's table, glanced admiringly at her own shapely hand,
+albeit the wrist might have impressed fastidious taste as of too robust
+proportions, and the fingers have suggested less of flexibility than is
+desirable.
+
+But to James the hand was perfect, and Susan, feeling her power, did not
+scruple to use it with brutal directness. She had that shivering dislike
+for deformity which, is possessed by the physically perfect, and she
+took it as a private grievance that James should have taken the liberty
+to break one of his fingers without her knowledge and consent. Until he
+had met her, James had carried his distorted member as a badge of honor.
+No warrior had worn more proudly his battle scars. For, to James, to be
+a catcher in a base-ball club was honor enough for one man, and he had
+never dreamed of a loftier ambition. He had grown to keep that mutilated
+finger ever to the fore as a retired general might carry an empty
+sleeve. It gave distinction and told of brave and lofty achievement, so
+James thought.
+
+Susan had modified his pride in the dislocated digit, but he had not yet
+learned to keep it always in the background. It had several times before
+interfered with his love-making, and James was humble.
+
+"Oh, now, Susie, don't you be so hard on that there old base-ball
+finger! I didn't know it was a-going to touch your lovely dimple,"
+and he held the offending member behind his back, as he slowly circled
+around the table towards the haughty Susan. "By gum! I b'lieve I left a
+mark on your chin. Lemme see." She thought she understood the ruse, but
+when he kissed her she pretended deep indignation and flounced out of
+the room, but the look on her face caused James to drop his left eyelid
+over a twinkling orb and shake his sides with satisfaction as he removed
+the dishes after Miss Gertrude had withdrawn from the dining-room.
+
+
+
+
+IV.
+
+The visit to the Spillini family had, indeed, led to strange
+complications and far-reaching results. No one who had known young
+Seldon Avery and his social life would ever have suspected him, or
+any member of his set, of a desire to take part in what, by their club
+friends or favorite reviews, was usually alluded to as the "dirty pool
+of politics." For the past decade political advancement, at least in New
+York, had grown to be looked upon by many as a mere matter of purchase
+and sale, and as quite beneath the dignity of the more refined and
+cultured men. It had been heralded as a vast joke, therefore, when young
+Selden Avery, the representative of one of the most cultured families
+and the honored son of an honored ancestry, had suddenly announced
+himself as a candidate for the Assembly. His club friends guyed him
+unmercifully. "We never did believe that you were half as good as you
+pretended to be, Avery," said one of them, the first time he appeared
+at the club after his nomination, "but I don't believe a man of us ever
+suspected you of the depths of depravity that this implies. What ever
+did put such a ridiculous idea into such a level and self-respecting
+head? Out with it!"
+
+Banter of this nature met him on every hand. He realized more fully than
+ever how changed the point of view had grown to be from the historical
+days of Washington or even of Lincoln. He recalled the time when in
+his own boyhood his honored father had served in the Legislature of his
+native state, and had not felt it other than a crowning distinction. Nor
+had it been so looked upon then by his associates.
+
+Nevertheless the constant jokes and gibes, which held something of a
+real sting, had become so frequent that, young Avery felt like resenting
+his friends' humorous thrusts.
+
+"I can't see that I need be ashamed to follow in the footsteps of my
+father," he said, a little hotly. "Some of the noblest of men--those
+upon whom the history of this country depends for lustre--held seats in
+the Assembly, and helped shape the laws of their states. I don't see why
+I need apologize for a desire to do the same."
+
+"It used to be an association of gentlemen up at the state capital, my
+boy. Today it is--Lord! you know what it is, I guess. But if you don't,
+just peruse this sacred volume," laughed his friend, sarcastically,
+producing a small pamphlet.
+
+"Looks to me as if you'd be rather out of your element with your
+colleagues. 'M-m-m! Yes, here is the list. Hunted this up after I heard
+you were going to stand for your district."
+
+The English form of expression was no affectation, for the speaker was
+far more familiar with political nomenclature abroad than at home. He
+would have felt it an honor to a man to be called upon to "stand" for
+his constituency in London, but to "run" for it in New York was far less
+dignified. Standing gave an idea of repose; running was vulgar. Then,
+too, the State Legislature did not bear the proportionate relationship
+to Congress that the Commons did to Parliament, and it was always in
+connection with that latter body that he had associated the term.
+
+"Let me see. One, two, three, four, 'teen 'steen--yes, I thought I
+was right! Just exactly nineteen of your nearest colleagues are saloon
+keepers. One used to keep that disorderly house on Prince Street, four
+are butchers, one was returned because he had won fame as a base-ballist
+and--but why go further? Here, Martin, I'm trying to convince Avery that
+it will be a trifle trying on his nerves to hobnob with the new set he's
+making for. Don't you think it is rather an anti-climax from the Union
+to the lower house at Albany? Ye gods!" and he laughed, half in scorn
+and half in real amusement.
+
+John Martin had extended his hand for the small pamphlet of statistics.
+He ran his eye over the list, and then turned an amused face upon Avery.
+
+"Think you'll like it?" he asked, dryly. "Or are you taking it as my
+French friend here says his countrymen take heaven?"
+
+"How's that?" queried Avery, smiling. "In broken doses--or not at all?"
+
+The French gentleman stood with that poise which belongs to the
+successful man. He glanced from one to the other and spread his hands to
+either side.
+
+"All Frenchmen desire to go to ze heaven, zhentlemen. Why? Ah, zere air
+two at-traczions which to effrey French zhentle-man air irresisteble.
+Ze angels--zey air women--and I suppose zat ze God weal also be an
+attraction. Ees eet not so?"
+
+Every one in the group laughed and he went on gravely on.
+
+"I zink zat eet ees true--ees eet not?--zat loafly woman will always be
+vara much ob-searved even in ze heaven eef we zhentlemen are zere. Eef?"
+He cast up the comers of his eyes, and made another elaborate movement
+of his hands.
+
+The others all laughed again.
+
+"Yes, zhentlemen, ze true Frenchman cares for two zings: a new
+sensation--someings zey haf not before experienced,--and zat ees God;
+and for zat which zey haf obsearved, but of which zey can naavear
+obsearve enough--loafly woman!"
+
+The explosion of laughter that greeted this sally brought about them a
+number of other gentlemen, and the talk drifted into different channels.
+Presently young Avery glanced at his watch and started, with rather
+a sore heart toward the door. He remembered that he had promised the
+managers of his campaign that he would be seen that evening at a certain
+open-air garden frequented by the humbler portion of his constituency.
+He concluded to go alone the first time that he might the better observe
+without attracting too much attention. This plan was thought wise to
+enable him to meet the exigencies of the coming campaign when he should
+be called upon to speak to this element of this supporters.
+
+Once outside the club house, he took a card from his pocket and glanced
+at the directions he had jotted upon it.
+
+"I'll walk across to the elevated," he thought, "and make my connection
+for Grady's place that way. It will save time and look more democratic."
+
+
+
+
+V.
+
+The infinite pathos of life was never better illustrated, perhaps, than
+in the merrymaking that night at Grady's Pavilion. The easy camaradarie
+between conscious and unconscious vice; the so-evident struggle the
+young girls had made to be beautiful and stylish, and the ghastly result
+of their cheap and incongruous finery; their ignorant acceptance of
+leers that meant to them honest admiration or affection, and to others
+meant far different things; their jolly, thoughtless, eager effort to
+get something joyful out of their narrow lives; the brilliant tints
+in which they saw the future, and the ghastly light in which it stood
+revealed to older and more experienced eyes, would have combined to
+depress a heart less tender and a vision less clear than could have been
+attributed to Selden Avery. Not that Grady's Pavilion was a bad place.
+
+Many of the girls present would not have been there had it been known as
+anything short of quite respectable; but it was a free and easy place,
+where vice meets ignorance without having first made an appointment,
+where opportunity shakes the ungloved hand of youth and leaves a stain
+upon the tender palm too deep and dark for future tears to wash away.
+
+"I wonder if I am growing morbid," mused Avery, as he sighed for the
+third time while looking at the face of a girl not over eighteen
+years old, but already marked by lines that told of a vaguely dawning
+comprehension of what the future held for her. Her round-eyed companion,
+a girl with a childish mind and face, sat beside her, but all the world
+was bright to her. Life held a prince, a fortune and a career which
+would be hers one day. She had only to wait, look pretty, and be ready
+when the apple of fortune fell. Her part was to hold out a pretty apron
+to break its descent.
+
+"Oh, the infinite pathos of youth!" muttered Avery, feeling himself very
+old with his thirty years of wider experience as his eyes turned from
+one girl to the other. "It is hard to tell which is the sadder sight;
+the disillusioned one or the one who will be even more roughly awakened
+to-morrow."
+
+His heart ached whenever he studied the face of a young girl. "There is
+nothing so sad in all the wretched world," he sometimes said, "as the
+birth of a girl in this grade of life. I am not sure that the nations
+we look upon as barbarous because they strangle the little things before
+they are able to think--I am not at all sure that they are not more
+civilized than we after all. We only maim them with ignorance and utter
+dependence, and then turn them out into a life where either of these
+alone is an incalculable curse, and the combination is as fatal as fire
+in a field of ripened grain."
+
+The younger girl was looking at him. Her wide expectant eyes rested on
+his face with a frankness and interest that touched his mood anew.
+
+"Poor little thing," he said, half aloud; "if I were to see her bound
+hand and foot and cast into a den of wolves, I might hope to rescue her;
+but from this, for such as she there is absolutely no escape. How dare
+people bring into the world those who must suffer?"
+
+"Huh?" said a voice beside him. He had spoken in a semi-audible tone,
+and his neighbor had responded after his habitual fashion, to what he
+looked upon as an overture to conversation.
+
+"I did not intend to speak aloud," said Avery, turning to glance at
+the man beside him; "but I was just wondering how people dared to have
+children--girls particularly."
+
+The man beside him turned his full face upon him and examined him
+critically from head to foot. Then he laughed. It was the first time he
+had ever heard it hinted that it was not a wholly commendable thing to
+bring as many children into the world as nature would permit. His first
+thought had been that Avery was insane, but after looking at him he
+decided that he was only a grim joker.
+
+"I reckon they don't spend no great deal of time prayin' over the
+subject," he said, laughing again. Then he crossed his legs and added,
+"an' I don't suppose they get any telegrams tellin' them they're goin'
+to _be_ girls, neither. If they did, a good many men would lick the boy
+that brought the despatch, for God knows most of us would a dam sight
+ruther have boys."
+
+The laugh had died out of his voice, and there was a ring of
+disappointment and aggrieved trouble in it. Selden Avery shifted his
+position.
+
+"I was not looking at it from the point of view of the parents of
+unwelcome girls," he said, presently, "but from the outlook of the girls
+of unwelcome parents. The reckoning from that side looks to me a good
+deal longer than the other." His voice was pleasant, but his eyes looked
+perplexed and determined. His neighbor began to readjust his opinion
+of Avery's sanity, and moved his chair a little farther away before he
+spoke.
+
+"Got any children of your own?" he inquired, succinctly. Avery shook
+his head. The man drew down the comers of his mouth in a contemptuous
+grimace. "I thought not. If you had, you'd take it a dam sight easier.
+Children are an ungrateful lot. They're never satisfied--or next to
+never. They think you're made for their comfort instead of their bein'
+for yours. I've got nine, and I know what I'm talkin' about. If you've
+got any sympathy to throw away don't waste it on children. Parents, in
+these days of degenerate youngsters, are passin' around the hat for
+sympathy. In my day it was just the other way. If one of the young ones
+went wrong, people pitied the father and blamed the child. Now-a-days
+they blame the father and weep over the young one that makes the
+mischief. It makes me mad."
+
+He shut his teeth with a suddenness that suggested a snap, and flashed a
+defiant look about the room.
+
+Avery glanced at his heavy, stubborn face, and decided not to reply. He
+was in no mood for controversy. And what good could it do, he said to
+himself, to argue with a mere lump of selfish egotism?
+
+"That is an unusually pretty girl over by the piano," he said, in a
+tone of mild indifference which he hoped would serve as a period to the
+conversation.
+
+"She's Tom Berton's girl," was the quick reply. "Berton's up to Albany
+most o' the time, with me. I represent our district. She's a nice little
+thing. She'll do anything you ask her to. I never see her equal for
+that. It's easier for her to do your way than it is to do her own. She
+likes to; so everybody likes her. I wish I had one like her; but my
+girls are as stubborn as mules. They won't drive, and they won't lead,
+and they'd ruther kick than eat. I don't know where they got it. Their
+mother wasn't half so bad that way, and the Lord knows it ain't in _my_
+family. The girl she's with is one o' mine. She looks like she could eat
+tenpenny nails. She might be just as pretty an' just as much liked as
+Ettie Berton, but she ain't. She's always growlin' about somethin'. I'll
+bet a dollar she'll growl about this when we get home. Ettie will think
+it was splendid. She'd have a good time at a funeral; but that girl of
+mine 'll get me to spend a dollar to come here and then she'll go home
+dissatisfied. It won't be up to what she expected.
+
+"Things never are. She's always lookin' to find things some other way.
+Now, what would you do with a girl like that?" he asked suddenly.
+Then without waiting for a reply, he added, "I give her a good tongue
+lashin', an' as she always knows it's comin', she's got so she don't
+kick _quite_ so much as she used to, but she just sets an' looks sullen
+like that. It makes me so mad I could--"
+
+He did not finish his remark, but got up and strolled away without the
+formality of an adieu.
+
+Avery watched his possible future colleague until he was lost in the
+crowd, and then he walked deliberately over to where the two girls
+stood.
+
+"I have been talking with your father," he said, smiling and bowing to
+the older girl, "and although he did not say that I might come and talk
+to you, he told me who you were, and I think he would not object."
+
+"Oh, no; he wouldn't object," said the younger girl, eagerly. "Would he,
+Fan? Everybody talks here. He told me so before we came. It's the first
+time we've been; but he's been before. I think it's splendid, don't
+you?"
+
+The older girl had not spoken. She was looking at Selden Avery with half
+suppressed interest and embryonic suspicion. She still knew too little
+of life to have formed even a clearly defined doubt as to him or his
+intentions in speaking to them. She was less happy than she had expected
+to be when she dressed to come with her ever-dawning hope for a real
+pleasure. She thought there must be something wrong with her because
+things never seemed to come up to her expectations. She supposed this
+must be "society," and that when she got used to it, she would enjoy it
+more. But somehow she had wanted to resent it the first time a man spoke
+to her, and then, afterward, she was glad she did not, for he had danced
+with Ettie twice, and Ettie had said it was a lovely dance. She had made
+up her mind to accept the next offer she had, but when it came, the
+eyes of the man were so beady-black, and the odor of bay rum radiated
+so insistently from him that she declined. She hated bay rum because
+the worst scolding her father ever gave her was when she had emptied
+his cherished bottle upon her own head. The odor always brought back
+the heart-ache and resentment of that day, and so she did not think she
+cared to dance just then.
+
+Selden Avery looked at Ettie. He did not want to tell her what he did
+think and he had not the heart to dampen her ardor, so he simply smiled,
+and said:
+
+"It is my first visit here, too; and I don't know a soul. I noticed you
+two young ladies a while ago, and spoke of you to the gentleman next
+to me and it chanced to be your father"--he turned to the older girl
+again--"so that was what gave me courage to come over here. If I had
+thought of it before he left me, I'd have asked him to introduce me, but
+I'm rather slow to think. My name is Selden Avery."
+
+"Did father tell you mine?" she asked, looking at him steadily, with
+eyes that held floating ends of thoughts that were never formed in full.
+
+"No, he didn't," replied Avery, laughing a little. "He told me yours,
+though," turning to the merry child at his side. "Ettie Berton, Tom
+Berton's daughter."
+
+Ettie laughed, and clapped her hands together twice.
+
+"Got it right the first time! But what did he give me away for and not
+her? She is Francis King. That is, her father's name's King, but she is
+so awfully particular about things and so hard to suit she ought to be
+named Queen, I tell her, so I call her Queen Fan mostly." There was a
+little laugh all around, and Avery said:--
+
+"Very good, very good, indeed;" but Francis looked uncomfortable and so
+he changed the subject. Presently she looked at him and asked:--
+
+"Do you think things are ever like they are in books? Do you think this
+is? She waved her hand toward the music and the lights. In the books I
+have read--and the story papers--it all seems nicer than this and--and
+different. It is because I say that, that they all make fun of me and
+call me Queen Fan, and father says--" she paused, and a cold light
+gathered in her eyes. "He don't like it, so I don't say it much, now. He
+says it's all put on; but it ain't Everything does seem to turn out so
+different from what you expected--from the way you read about. I've not
+felt like I thought _maybe_ I should to-night because--because--" she
+stopped again.
+
+"Because why?" asked Avery, laughing a little. "Because I'm not a bit
+like the usual story-book prince you ought to have met and--?"
+
+She smiled, and Ettie made a droll little grimace.
+
+"No, it wasn't that at all. I've been thinking most all evening that it
+wasn't worth--that--"
+
+"Oh, she's worried," put in Ettie, "because she got her father to spend
+a dollar to bring her. She's afraid he'll throw it up to her afterward,
+and she thinks it won't pay for that, so it spoils the whole thing
+before he does it--just being afraid he will. But I tell her he won't,
+this time. I--" Francis' eyes had filled with tears of mortification,
+and Avery pretended not to have heard. He affected a deep interest in
+the music.
+
+"Do you know what it is they are playing now?" he asked, with his eyes
+fixed upon the musicians. "I thought at first that it was going to
+be--No, it is--Ton my word I can't recall it, and I ought to know what
+it is, too. The first time I ever heard it, I remember--"
+
+He turned toward where Francis had stood, but she was gone. "Why, what
+has become of Miss King?" he asked of the other girl. Ettie looked all
+about, laughed and wondered and chattered as gaily as a bird.
+
+"I expect she's gone home. She's the queerest you ever saw. I guess she
+didn't want me to say that about her pa. But it'll make him madder than
+anything if she has gone that way. He won't like it at all--an' I can't
+blame him. What's the use to be so different from other folks?" she
+inquired, sagely, and then she added, laughing: "I don't know as she is
+so different, either. We all hate things, but we pretend we don't. Don't
+you think it's better to pretend to like things, whether you do or not?"
+
+"No," replied Avery, beginning to look with surprise upon this small
+philosopher who had no conception of the worldly wisdom of her own
+philosophy.
+
+"I do," she said, laughing again. "It goes down better. Everybody
+likes you better. I've found that out already, and so I pretend to like
+everything. Of course I do like some of 'em, and some I don't, but it's
+just as easy to say you like 'em all." She laughed again, and kept time
+with her toe on the floor.
+
+"Just what don't you like?" asked Avery, smiling. "Won't you tell me,
+truly? I won't tell any one, and I'd like to be sure of one thing you
+object to--on principle."
+
+"Well, tob--Do you smoke?" she asked.
+
+He shook his head, and pursed up his lips negatively.
+
+"I thought not," she said, gaily. "You look like you didn't. Well, I
+hate--hate--hate--hate smoke. When I go on a ferry-boat, and the air is
+so nice and cool and different from at home, and seems so clean, I just
+love it, and then--"
+
+"Some one sits near you and smokes," put in Avery, consolingly.
+
+"Yes, they do; and I just most pray that he'll fall over and get
+drownded--but he never does; and if he asks me if I object to smoke,
+I say, 'Oh! not at all!' and then he thinks I'm such a nice, sensible
+girl. Fan tells 'em right out that she don't like it. It makes her
+deadly sick, and the boys all hate her for it. Her father says it's
+da---- I was going to say his cuss word, but I guess I won't. Anyhow,
+he says it's all nonsense and put on. I guess I better go. There is
+her father looking for us. Poor Fan'll catch it when we get home!
+Good-night. I've had a lovely time, haven't you?" She waved her hand.
+Then she retraced the step she had taken. "Don't tell that I don't like
+tobacco," she said, and started away laughing. He followed her a few
+steps.
+
+"How is any fellow to know what you really do like?" he asked, smiling,
+"if you do that way?"
+
+"Fan says nobody wants to know," she said, slyly. "She says they want to
+know that I like what they want me to like, and think what they think I
+think." She laughed again. "And of course I do," she added, and bowed in
+mock submission. "Now, Fan don't. That's where she misses it; and if she
+don't--reform," she said, lowering her voice, as she neared that young
+lady's father, "she is going to see trouble that is trouble. I'll bet a
+cent on it. Don't you?" she asked, as she bestowed a bright smile upon
+Mr. King.
+
+"Yes," said Avery, and lifting his hat, turned on his heel and was lost
+in the crowd.
+
+"Where's Fan?" inquired that young lady's father in a tone which
+indicated that, as a matter of course, she was up to some devilment
+again.
+
+"She got a headache and went home quite a while ago," said that young
+lady's loyal little friend. "She enjoyed it quite a lot till she did
+get a headache." As they neared the street where both lived, Ettie said:
+"That man talked to her, and I think she liked him."
+
+"Humph!" said Mr. King. "I wouldn't be surprised. She'd be likely to
+take to a lunatic. I thought he was about the damnedest fool I ever saw;
+didn't you?"
+
+"Yes," said Ettie, laughing, "and I liked him for it."
+
+Mr. King burst into a roar of laughter. "Of course you did! You'd like
+the devil. You're that easy to please. I wish to the Lord Fan was," and
+with a hearty "goodnight," he left her at her father's door, and crossed
+the street.
+
+Once outside the garden, Avery drew from his pocket the little pamphlet
+which his club friend had given him, and ran his finger down the list.
+
+"King, member the--ah, ha! one end of his ward joins mine! 'M-m-m; yes,
+I see. He is one of the butchers. I suspected as much. Let me see; yes,
+he votes my ticket, too. If I'm elected we'll be comrades-in-arms, so to
+speak I suppose I ought to have told him who I was; but if I'm elected
+he'll find out soon enough, and if I'm beaten--well, I can't say that
+I'm anxious to extend the acquaintance." He replaced the book in his
+pocket as the guard called out, 'Thirty-Fourth Street! 'strain for
+Arlem!' and left the train, musing as he strolled along. "Yes, Gertrude
+was quite right--quite. We fortunate ones have no right to allow all
+this sort of thing to go on. We have no right to leave it entirely to
+such men as that to make the laws. I don't care if the fellows up at the
+club do guy me. Gertrude--" He drew from his breast-pocket a little
+note, and read it for the tenth time.
+
+"I am so gratified to hear that you have accepted the nomination," it
+said. "You have the time, and mental and moral equipment to give to
+the work Were I a man, I should not sleep o' nights until some way
+was devised to prevent all the terrible poverty and ignorance and
+brutishness we were talking about the other day. I went to see that
+Spillini family again. I was afraid to go alone, so I took with me two
+girls who are in a sewing class, which is, just now a fad at our Church
+Guild. I thought their experience with poverty would enable them to
+think of a way to get at this case; but it did not. They appeared to
+think it was all right It seems to me that ignorance and poverty leave
+no room for thought, or even for much feeling. It hurt me like a knife
+to have those girls laugh over it after we came out; at least, one of
+them laughed, and the other seemed scornful, It is not fair to expect
+more of them, I know, for we expect so little of ourselves. It is
+thinking of all this that makes me write to tell you how glad I am that
+you are to represent your district in Albany. Such men are needed, for
+I know you will work for the poor with the skill of a trained intellect
+and a sympathetic heart. I am so glad. Sincerely your friend, Gertrude
+Foster."
+
+Mr. Avery replaced the note in his pocket, and smiled contentedly. "I
+don't care a great deal what the fellows at the club say," he repeated.
+"I'm satisfied, if Gertrude--" He had spoken the last few words almost
+audibly, and the name startled him. He realized for the first time that
+he had fallen into the habit of thinking of her as Gertrude, and
+it suddenly flashed upon him that Miss Foster might be a good deal
+surprised by that fact if she knew it. He fell to wondering if she would
+also be annoyed. There was a tinge of anxiety in the speculation. Then
+it occurred to him that the sewing class of the Guild might give an
+outlet and a chance for a bit of pleasure to that strange girl he had
+seen at Grady's Pavilion, and he made a little memorandum, and decided
+to call upon Gertrude and suggest it to her. He fell asleep that night
+and dreamed of Gertrude Foster, holding out a helping hand to a strange,
+tall girl, with dissatisfied eyes, and that Ettie Berton was laughing
+gaily and making everybody comfortable, by asserting that she liked
+everything exactly as she found it.
+
+
+
+
+VI
+
+The next evening Avery called upon Gertrude to thank her for her letter,
+and, incidentally, to tell her of the experience at Grady's Pavilion,
+and bespeak the good office of the Guild for those two human pawns, who
+had, somehow, weighed upon his heart.
+
+Avery was not a Churchman himself, but he felt very sure that any Guild
+which would throw Gertrude Foster's influence about less fortunate
+girls, would be good, so he gave very little thought to the phase of it
+which was not wholly related to the personality of the young woman in
+whose eyes he had grown to feel he must appear well and worthy, if he
+retained his self-respect. This bar of judgment had come, by unconscious
+degrees, to be the one before which he tried his own cases for and
+against himself.
+
+"Would Gertrude like it if she should know? Would I dislike to have her
+know that I did this or felt that?" was now so constantly a part of his
+mental processes, that he had become quite familiar with her verdicts,
+which were most often passed--from his point of view, and in his own
+mind--without the knowledge of the girl herself.
+
+He had never talked of love to her, except in the general and impersonal
+fashion of young creatures who are wont to eagerly discuss the profound
+perplexities of life without having come face to face with one of them.
+One day they had talked of love in a cottage. The conversation had been
+started by the discussion of a new novel they had just read, and Avery
+told her of a strange fellow whom he knew, who had married against the
+wishes of his father, and had been disinherited.
+
+"He lost his grip, somehow," said Avery, "and went from one disaster
+into another. First he lost his place, and the little salary they had to
+live on was stopped. It was no fault of his. It had been in due course
+of a business change in the firm he worked for. He got another, but not
+so good a situation, but the little debts that had run up while he was
+idle were a constant drag on him. He never seemed able to catch up. Then
+his wife's health failed. She needed a change of climate, rare and
+delicate food, a quiet mind relieved of anxiety, but he could not give
+her these. His own nerves gave way under the strain, and at last
+sickness overtook him, and he had to appeal to me for a loan."
+
+It was the letter which his friend had written when in that desperate
+frame of mind, which Avery read to Gertrude the day they had discussed
+the novel together. It was a strange, desperate letter, and it had
+greatly stirred Gertrude. One passage in it had rather shocked her. It
+was this: "When a fellow is young, and knows little enough of life to
+accept the fictions of fiction as guides, he talks or thinks about it
+as 'love in a cottage.' After he has tried it a while, and suffered in
+heart and soul _because_ of his love of those whom he must see day
+after day handicapped in mind and wrecked in body for the need of larger
+means, he begins to speak of it mournfully as 'poverty with love' But
+when that awful day comes, when sickness or misfortune develops before
+his helpless gaze all the horrors of dependence and agony of mind that
+the future outlook shows him, then it is that the fitting description
+comes, and he feels like painting above the door he dreads to
+enter--'hell at home.' Without the love there would be no home; without
+the poverty no hell. Neither lightens the burdens of the other. Each
+multiplies all that is terrible in both."
+
+Gertrude had listened to the letter with a sad heart. When she did not
+speak, Avery felt that he should modify some of its terms if he would be
+fair to his absent acquaintance.
+
+"Of course he would have worded it a little differently if he had known
+that any one else would read it. He was desperate. He had gone through
+such a succession of disasters. If anything was going to fall it seemed
+as if he was sure to be under it, so I don't much wonder at his language
+after--"
+
+"I don't wonder at it at all," said Gertrude, looking steadily into the
+fire. "What seems wonderful, is the facts which his words portray. I can
+see that they are facts; but what I cannot see is--is--"
+
+"How he could express them so raspingly--so--?" began Avery, but she
+turned to him quite frankly surprised.
+
+"Oh, no! Not that. But how can it be right that it should be so? And if
+it is not right, why do not you men who have the power, do something to
+straighten things out? Is this sort of suffering absolutely _necessary_
+in the world?"
+
+It was this talk and its suggestions which had led Avery to first take
+seriously into consideration the proposition that he run for a seat
+in the Assembly. It seemed to him that men like himself, who had both
+leisure and convictions, might do some good work there, and he began to
+realize that the law-making of the state was left, for the most part, in
+very dangerous hands, and that a law once passed must inevitably help
+to crystallize public opinion in such a way as to retard freer or better
+action.
+
+"To think of allowing that class of men to set the standards about
+which public opinion forms and rallies!" he thought, as the professional
+politician arose before him, and his mind was made up. He would be a
+candidate. So the night after his experience at Grady's Pavilion he had
+another puzzle to lay before Gertrude. When he entered the hallway
+he was sorry to hear voices in the drawing-room. He had hoped to find
+Gertrude and her mother alone. His first impulse was to leave his card
+and call at another time, but the servant recognizing his hesitation,
+ventured a bit of information.
+
+"Excuse me, Mr. Avery, but I don't think they will be here long. It's a
+couple of--They--"
+
+"Thank you, James. Are they not friends of Miss Gertrude?"
+
+James smiled in a manner which displayed a large capacity for pity.
+
+"Well, sir, I shouldn't say they was exactly friends. No, sir, ner yet
+callers, sir. They're some of them Guilders."
+
+Avery could not guess what Gertrude would have gilders in the
+drawing-room for at that hour, but decided to enter. "Mr. Avery;" said
+James, in his most formal and perfunctory fashion, as he drew back the
+portiere and announced the new arrival No one would have dreamed from
+the stolid front presented by the liveried functionary, that he had just
+exchanged confidences with the guest.
+
+"Let me introduce my friends to you, Mr. Avery," began Gertrude, and two
+figures arose, and from one came a gay little laugh, a mock courtesy,
+and "Law me! It's him! Well, if this don't beat the Dutch!"
+
+She extended her hand to him and laughed again. "We didn't shake hands
+last night, but now's we're regul'rly interduced I guess we will," she
+added.
+
+Avery took her hand, and then offered his to her companion, and bowed
+and smiled again.
+
+"Really, I shall begin to grow superstitious," he said, in an
+explanatory tone to Gertrude. "I came here to-night to see if I could
+arrange to have you three young ladies meet; to learn if there was a
+chance at the Guild to--"
+
+"Oh," smiled Gertrude, beginning to grasp the situation. "How very nice!
+But these two are my star girls at the Guild now. We were just arranging
+some work for next week, but--"
+
+"Yas, she wants to go down to that Spillini hole agin," broke in Ettie
+Berton, and Francis King glanced suspiciously from Gertrude to
+Avery. She wondered just what these two were thinking. She felt very
+uncomfortable and wished that he had not come in. She had not spoken
+since Avery entered, and he realized her discomfort.
+
+"You treated us pretty shabbily last night, Miss King," he said,
+smiling, and then he turned to Gertrude. "She left me in the middle of a
+remark. We met at Grady's Pavilion, and if I'm elected, I learn that the
+fathers of both of these young ladies will be my companions-in-arms in
+the Assembly. They--!" In spite of herself, Gertrude's face showed her
+surprise, but Ettie Berton broke in with a gay laugh.
+
+"Are you in politics? Law me! I'd never a believed it. I don't see how
+you're agoin' to get on unless you get a--"
+
+She realized that her remark was going to indicate a belief in certain
+incapacity in him, and she took another cue.
+
+"My pa says nobody hardly can't get on in politics by himself. You see
+my pa is a sort of a starter for Fan's pa in politics, 're else he'd
+never got on in the world. Fan's pa backs him, and he starts things that
+her pa wants started."
+
+Francis moved uneasily, and Gertrude said: "That is natural enough
+since they were friends here, and, I think you told me, were in business
+together, didn't you?"
+
+Ettie laughed, and clapped her hands gaily. "That's good! In business
+together! Oh, Lord, I'll tell pa that. He'll roar. Why, pa is a
+prerofessional starter. He ain't in business with no particular one only
+jest while the startin's done."
+
+The girl appeared to think that Avery and Gertrude were quite familiar
+with professional starters, and she rattled on gaily.
+
+"I thought I'd die the time he started them butcher shops for Fan's pa,
+though. He hadn't never learnt the difference between a rib roast 'n a
+soup bone, 'n he had to keep a printed paper hung up inside o' the ice
+chest so's he'd know which kind of a piece he got out to sell; but he
+talked so nice an' smooth all the time he _was_ a gettin' it out, an'
+tole each customer that the piece they asked fer was the 'choicest
+part of the animal,' but that mighty few folks had sense enough to know
+it--oh, it was funny! I used to get where I could hear him, and jest die
+a laughin'. He'd sell the best in the shop for ten cents a pound, an'
+he'd cut it which ever way they ast him to, an' make heavy weight. His
+price list was a holy show, but he jest scooped in all the trade around
+there in no time, an' the other shops had to move. Then you ought t'
+a seen Fan's pa come in there an' brace things up! Whew!" She laughed
+delightedly, and Francis's face flushed.
+
+"He braced prices up so stiff that some o' the customers left, but most
+of 'em stayed rather'n hunt up a new place to start books in. Pa, he'd
+started credit books with _all_ of 'em.
+
+"Pa, he was in the back room the first day Fan's pa and the new clerk
+took the shop, after pa got it good'n started. Him an' me most died
+laughin' at the kickin' o' the people. Every last one of 'em ast fer pa
+to wait on 'em, but Fan's pa he told 'em that he'd bankrupted hisself
+and had t' sell out to him. Pa said he wisht he had somethin' to
+bankrupt on. But, law, he'll never make no money. He ain't built that
+way. He's a tip top perfessional starter tho', ain't he, Fan?" she
+concluded with a gleeful reminiscent grimace at her friend. Francis
+shifted her position awkwardly, and tried to feel that everything
+was quite as it should be in good society, and Gertrude made a little
+attempt to divert the conversation to affairs of the Guild, but Ettie
+Berton, who appeared to look upon her father as a huge joke, and to feel
+herself most at home in discussing him, broke in again:--
+
+"But the time he started the 'Stable fer Business Horses,' was the
+funniest yet," and she laughed until her eyes filled with tears, and she
+dried them with the lower part of the palms of her hands, rubbing them
+red.
+
+"The boss told him not to take anything _but_ business horses. What he
+meant was, to be sure not to let in any fancy high-steppers, fer fear
+they'd get hurt or sick, an' he'd have trouble about 'em Well, pa didn't
+understand at first, an' he wouldn't take no mules, an' most all the
+business horses around there _was_ mules, an' when drivers'd ask him why
+he wouldn't feed 'em 'er take 'em in, he jest had t' fix up the funniest
+stories y' ever heard. He tole one man that he hadn't laid in the kind
+o' feed mules eat, n' the man told him he was the biggest fool to talk
+he ever see. The mule-man he--"
+
+Francis King had arisen, and started awkwardly toward Gertrude, with her
+hand extended.
+
+"I think we ought to go," she said, uneasily, her large eyes burning
+with mortification, and an oppressed sense of being at a disadvantage.
+
+"So soon?" said Gertrude, smiling as she took her hand, and laid her
+other arm about the shoulders of Ettie, who had hastened to place
+herself in the group. "I was so entertained that I did not realize that
+perhaps you ought to go before it grows late--oh," glancing at a tiny
+watch in her bracelet, "it is late--too late for you to go way down
+there alone. I will send James, or--"
+
+"Allow me the pleasure, will you not?" asked Avery, bowing first to
+Gertrude, and then toward Francis, and Gertrude said:--
+
+"Oh, thank you, if--" but Ettie clapped her hands in glee.
+
+"Well, that's too rich! Just as if we didn't go around by ourselves all
+the time, and--Lord! pa says if anybody carries me off he'd only go as
+far as the lamp-post, and drop me as soon as the light struck me! Now
+Fan's pretty, but--" she laughed, and made clawing movements in the air.
+"Nobody'll get away with Queen Fan's long's she's got finger-nails 'n
+teeth." She snapped her pretty little white teeth together with mock
+viciousness, and laughed again. "I'd just pity the fellow that tried any
+tomfoolery with Queen Fan. He'd wish he'd died young!"
+
+They all laughed a bit at this sally, and Avery said he did not want
+Miss King to be forced to extremities in self-protection while he was
+able to relieve her of the necessity.
+
+When James closed the door behind the laughing group, he glanced at Miss
+Gertrude to see what she thought of it, but he remarked to Susan later
+on, that "Miss Gertrude looked as if she was born 'n brought up that way
+herself. She didn't show no amusement ner no sarcasm in her face. An' as
+fer Mr. Avery, it was nothing short of astonishing, to see him offer his
+arms to those two Guilders as they started down the avenue."
+
+And Susan ventured it as her present belief, that if Gertrude's father
+once caught any of her Guilders around, he'd "make short work of the
+whole business. She ought't be ashamed o' herself, so she ought. Ketch
+_me,_ if I was in her shoes, a consortin' with--"
+
+"Anybody but me, Susie," put in the devoted James; but alas, for him,
+the stiff, unyielding hooked joint of his injured finger came first
+in contact with the wrist of the fair Susan as he essayed to clasp her
+hand, and she evaded the grasp and flung out of the room with a shiver.
+"Keep that old twisted base-ball bat off o' me! I--"
+
+"Oh, Susie!" said James, dolefully, to himself, as he slowly surrounded
+the offending member with the folds of his handkerchief, which gave it
+the appearance of being in hospital. "Oh, Susie! how kin you?"
+
+When John Martin, on his way, intending to drop in for the last act of
+the opera, passed Gertrude's door just in time to see Avery and the two
+girls come down the steps, his lip curled a bit, and his heart performed
+that strange feat which loving hearts have achieved in all the ages
+past, in spite of reason and of natural impulses of kindness. It took
+on a distinctly hard feeling towards Avery, and this feeling was not
+unmixed with resentment. "How dare he take girls like that to her house?
+I was a fool to take her to the Spillinis, but I'd never be idiot enough
+to take that type of girl to _her_ house. Avery's political freak has
+dulled his sense of propriety."
+
+Mr. Martin wondered vaguely if he ought not to say something to
+Gertrude's father, and then he thought it might possibly be better to
+touch lightly upon it himself in talking to her.
+
+He had heard some gossip at the opera and in the club, which indicated
+that society did not approve altogether of some of the things Gertrude
+had recently said and done; but that it smiled approvingly at what
+it believed to be as good as an engagement between the young lady and
+Selden Avery. Martin ground his teeth now as he thought of it, and
+glanced again at the retreating forms of Avery and the two girls.
+
+"It was that visit to the Spillinis, and the revelation of life which it
+gave her, that is to blame for it all," he groaned. "I was an accursed
+fool--an accursed fool!"
+
+That night Gertrude lay thinking how charmingly Selden Avery had met
+the situation, and how well he had helped carry it off with Ettie and
+Francis. "He seemed to look at it all just as I do," she thought. I felt
+that I knew just what he was thinking, and he certainly guessed that I
+wanted him to see them home, exactly as if they had been girls of our
+own set. "Poor little Ettie! I wonder what we can do with, or for, such
+as she? She is so hopelessly--happy and ignorant." Then she fell asleep,
+and dreamed of rescuing Ettie from the fangs a maddened dog, and Francis
+stood by and looked scornfully at Gertrude's lacerated hands, and then
+pointed to her little friend's mangled body and the smile upon her dead
+lips.
+
+"She never knew what hurt her, and she teased the dog to begin with,"
+she said. "You are maimed for life, and may go mad, just trying to help
+her--and she never knew and she never cared." Gertrude's dreamed had
+strayed and wandered into vagaries without form or outline, and in the
+morning nothing of it was left but an unreasonably heavy heart, and a
+restless desire to do--she knew not what.
+
+
+
+
+VII.
+
+When Avery took his seat in the Assembly he learned that Ettie Berton's
+father had been true to his calling. He still might be described as a
+professional starter. Any bill which was in need of some one to either
+introduce or offer a speech in its favor, found in John Berton an
+ever-ready champion.
+
+Not that he either understood or believed in all the bills he presented
+or advocated. Belief and understanding were not for sale; nor,
+indeed, were they always very much within his own grasp. He was in the
+Legislature to promote, or start, such measures as stood in need of his
+peculiar abilities. This was very soon understood, and many a bill
+which other men feared or hesitated to present found its way to him and
+through him to a reading. For a while Avery watched this process with
+amusement. He wrote to Gertrude, from time to time, some very humorous
+letters about it; but finally, one day a letter came which so bitterly
+denounced both King and Berton, that Gertrude wondered what could have
+wrought the sudden change.
+
+"He has introduced a bill which is now before my committee," he wrote,
+"that passes all belief. It is infamous beyond words to express, and,
+to my dismay, it finds many advocates beside King and Berton. That a
+conscienceless embruted inmate of an opium dive in Mott Street might
+acknowledge to himself in the dark, and when he was alone, that he could
+advocate such a measure, seems to me possible; but men who are in one
+sense reputable, who--many of them--look upon themselves as respectable;
+men who are fathers of girls and brothers of women, could even consider
+such a bill, I would not have believed possible, and yet, I am ashamed
+to say that I learn now for the first time, that our state is not the
+only one where similar measures have not only found advocates, but
+where there were enough moral lepers with voting power to establish such
+legislation. It makes me heartsick and desperate. I am ashamed of the
+human race. I am doubly ashamed that it is to my sex such infamous laws
+are due.
+
+"You were right, my dear Miss Gertrude; you were right. It is outrageous
+that we allow mere conscienceless politicians to legislate for
+respectable people, and yet my position here is neither pleasant, nor
+will it, I fear, be half so profitable as you hope--as I hoped, before I
+came and learned all I now know. But, believe me, I shall vote on every
+bill and make every speech, with your face before me, and as if I were
+making that particular law to apply particularly to you."
+
+Gertrude smiled as she re-read that part of his letter.
+
+She wondered what awful bill Ettie's father had presented. She had never
+before thought that a legislator might strive to enact worse laws than
+he already found in the statute books. She had thought most of the
+trouble was that they did not take the time and energy to repeal old,
+bad laws that had come to us from an ignorant or brutal past.
+
+It struck her as a good idea, that a man should never vote on a measure
+that he did not feel he was making a rule of action to apply to the
+woman for whom he cared most; she knew now that she was that woman for
+Selden Avery. He had told her that the night he came to bring the news
+that he was elected. It had been told in a strangely simple way.
+
+Her father and mother had laughingly congratulated him upon his
+election, and Mr. Poster had added, banteringly: "If one may
+congratulate a man upon taking a descent like that."
+
+Gertrude had held one of her father's hands in her own, and tried by
+gentle pressure to check him. Her father laughed, and added: "The little
+woman here is trying to head me off. She appears to think--"
+
+"Papa," said Gertrude, extending her other hand to Avery, "I do think
+that Mr. Avery is to be congratulated that he has the splendid courage
+to try to do something distinctly useful for other people, than simply
+for the few of us who are outside or above most of the horrors of life.
+I do--" Avery suddenly lifted her hand to his lips, and his eyes told
+the rest. "Mr. Foster," he said, still holding the girl's hand, and
+blushing painfully, "there can never be but one horror in the world too
+awful for me to face, and that would be to lose the full respect and
+confidence of your daughter. I know I have those now, and for the rest
+--" He glanced again at Gertrude. She was pale, and she was looking with
+an appeal in her eyes to her mother.
+
+Mrs. Foster moved a step nearer, and put her arm about the girl. "For the
+rest, Mr. Avery, for the rest--later on, later on," she said, kindly.
+"Gertrude has traveled very fast these past few months, but she is her
+mother's girl yet." Then she smiled kindly, and added: "Gertrude has set
+a terrible standard for the man she will care for. I tremble for him and
+I tremble for her."
+
+"Tut, tut," said her father, "there are no standards in love--none
+whatever. Love has its own way, and standards crumble--"
+
+"In the past, perhaps. But in the future--" began his wife.
+
+"In the future," said Gertrude, as she drew nearer to her mother, "in
+the future they may not need to crumble, because,--because--" Her eyes
+met Avery's, and fell. She saw that his muscles were tense, and his face
+was unhappy.
+
+"Because men will be great enough and true enough to rise to the ideals,
+and not need to crumble the ideals to bring them to their level."
+
+Avery bent forward and grasped her hand that was within her mother's.
+
+"Thank you," he said, tremulously. "Thank you, oh, darling! and the rest
+can wait," he said, to Mrs. Poster, and dropping both hands, he left the
+room and the house.
+
+Gertrude ran up-stairs and locked her door.
+
+Mr. Foster turned to his wife with a half amused, half vexed face.
+"Well, this is a pretty kettle of fish. What's to become of Martin, I'd
+like to know?"
+
+"John Martin has never had a ghost of a chance at any time--never," said
+his wife, slowly trailing her gown over the rug, and dragging with it a
+small stand that had caught its carved claw in the lace. It toppled and
+fell with a crash. The beautiful vase it had held was in fragments. "Oh,
+Katharine!" exclaimed her husband, springing forward to disengage her
+lace. "Oh, it is too bad, isn't it?"
+
+And Katherine Foster burst into tears, and with her arms suddenly thrown
+about her husband's neck she sobbed: "Oh, yes, it is too bad! It is too
+bad!" But it did not seem possible to her husband that the broken vase
+could have so affected her, and surely no better match could be asked
+for Gertrude. It could not be that. He was deeply perplexed, and
+Katherine Foster, with a searching look in her face, kissed him sadly as
+one might kiss the dead, and went to her daughter's room.
+
+She tapped lightly and then said, "It is I, daughter."
+
+The girl opened the door and as quickly closed and locked it. Instantly
+their arms were around each other and both were close to tears.
+
+"Don't try to talk, darling," whispered Mrs. Foster, as they sat down
+upon the couch. "Don't try to talk. I understand better than you do
+yet, and oh, Gertrude, your mother loves you!"
+
+"Yes, mamma," said the girl, hoarsely. "Dear little mamma--poor little
+mamma, we all love you;" and Mrs. Foster sighed.
+
+
+
+
+VIII.
+
+The day Gertrude received Avery's letter about bill number 408, she
+asked her father what the bill was about. He looked at her in surprise,
+and then at his wife. "I don't know anything about it, child," he said;
+"Why?"
+
+Gertrude drew from her pocket Avery's letter and read that part of it.
+Her father's face clouded.
+
+"What business has he to worry you with his dirty political work? I
+infer from what he says that it is a bill that I've only heard mentioned
+once or twice. The sort of thing they do in secret sessions and keep
+from the newspapers in the main. That is, they are only barely named in
+the paper and under a number or heading which people don't understand.
+I'm disgusted with Avery--perfectly!" Gertrude was surprised, but with
+that ignorance and absolute sincerity of youth, she appealed to her
+mother.
+
+"Mamma, do you see any reason why, from that letter, papa should be
+vexed with Mr. Avery? It seemed to me to have just the right tone; but I
+am sorry he did not tell me just what the bill is."
+
+"You let me catch him telling you, if it's what I think it is," retorted
+her father, rather hotly. "It's not fit for your ears. Good women have
+no business with such knowledge and--"
+
+Mrs. Foster held up a warning finger to her daughter, but the girl had
+not been convinced.
+
+"Don't good men know such things, papa? Don't such bills deal with
+people in a way which will touch women, too? I can't see why you put it
+that way. If a bill is to be passed into a law, and it is of so vile a
+nature as you say and as this letter indicates, in whose interest is it
+to be silent or ignorant? Do you want such a bill passed? Would mamma or
+I?"
+
+Her father laughed, and rose from the table. "It is in the interest
+of nothing good. No, I should say if you or your mother, or any other
+respectable mother at all, were in the Legislature, no such bill would
+have a ghost of a chance; but--"
+
+Gertrude's eyes were fixed upon her father. They were very wide open and
+perplexed.
+
+"Then it can be only in the interest of the vilest and lowest of the
+race that good men keep silent, and prefer to have good women ignorant
+and helpless in such--" she began; but her father turned at the door
+and said, nervously and almost sharply, "Gertrude, if Avery has no more
+sense than to start you thinking about such things, I advise you to
+cut his acquaintance. Such topics are not fit for women; I am perfectly
+disgusted with--"
+
+As he was passing out of the dining-room, John Martin entered the street
+door and faced him. "Hello, Martin! Glad to see you! The ladies are
+still at luncheon; won't you come right in here and join them in a cup
+of chocolate?"
+
+He was heartily glad of the interruption, and felt that it was very
+timely indeed that Mr. Martin had dropped in.
+
+"No, I can't take off my top-coat. Get yours. I want you to join me in
+a spin in the park. I've got that new filly outside." Mr. Foster ran
+up-stairs to get ready for the drive, and the ladies insisted that a
+cup of hot chocolate was the very thing to prepare Mr. Martin for the
+nipping air. He was a trifle ill at ease. He wanted to speak of Selden
+Avery, and he feared if he did so that he would say the wrong thing.
+He had come to-day, partly to have a talk with his friend Foster about
+certain gossip he had heard. Fate took the reins.
+
+In rising, Gertrude had dropped Avery's letter. John Martin was the
+first to see it. He laughingly offered it to her with the query: "Do you
+sow your love letters about that way, Miss Gertrude?"
+
+"Gertrude's love letters take the form of political speeches just now,
+and bills and committee reports and the like," laughed her mother. "Her
+father was just showing his teeth over that one, He thinks women have
+no--"
+
+"Mr. Martin, tell me truly," broke in the girl, "tell me truly, don't
+you think that we are all equally interested in having only good laws
+made? And don't you think if a proposed measure is too bad for good
+women even to be told what it is, that it is bad enough for all good
+people to protest against?"
+
+"How are they going to protest if they don't know what it is?" laughed
+Martin. "Well, Miss Gertrude, I believe that is the first time I ever
+suspected you to be of Celtic blood. But what dreadful measure is Avery
+advocating now?" he smiled. "Really, I shouldn't have believed it of
+Avery!"
+
+"What!" exclaimed Mr. Poster, entering with his top-coat buttoned to the
+chin, and his driving-hat in hand. Gertrude still held the letter. "No,
+nor should I have believed it of Avery. It was an outrageous thing for
+him to do. What business has Gertrude or Katherine with his disgusting
+old bills. Just before you came in I advised Gertrude to cut him
+entirely, and--"
+
+Mrs. Foster was trying to indicate to her husband that he was off the
+track, and that Mr. Martin did not understand him; but he had the bit
+in his teeth and went on. "You agree with me now, don't you? What do you
+think of his mentioning such things to Gertrude?" He reached over
+and took the letter from his daughter's hand, and read a part of the
+obnoxious paragraph.
+
+John Martin's face was a study. He glanced at the two ladies, and then
+fixed his eyes upon Gertrude's father.
+
+"Good Gad!" he said, slowly and almost below his breath. "If I were in
+your place I should shoot him. The infamous--" He checked himself, and
+the two men withdrew. Gertrude and her mother waved at them from the
+window, and then the girl said: "I intend to know what that bill is.
+What right have men to make laws that they themselves believe are too
+infamous for good women even to know about? Don't you believe if all
+laws or bills had to be openly discussed before and with women, it would
+be better, mamma? I do."
+
+Her mother's cheek was against the cold glass of the window. She was
+watching the receding forms. Presently she turned slowly to her daughter
+and said, in a trembling tone:--
+
+"Such bills as this one," she drew a small printed slip from her bosom
+and handed it to Gertrude, "such bills as that would never be dreamed
+of by men if they knew they must pass the discussion of a pure girl or
+a mother--never! Their only chance is secret session, and the fact that
+even men like your--like Mr. Martin and--and--" she was going to say
+"your father," but the girl pressed her hand and she did not. "That even
+such as they--for what reason heaven only knows--think they are serving
+the best interests of the women they love by a silence which fosters and
+breeds just such measures as--"
+
+Gertrude was reading the queer, blind phraseology of the bill. Katherine
+had watched her daughter's face as she talked, and now the girl's lips
+were moving and she read audibly: "be, and is hereby enacted, that
+henceforth the legal age in the state of New York whereat a female may
+give consent to the violation of her own person shall be reduced to ten
+years."
+
+Gertrude dropped the paper in her lap and looked up like a frightened,
+hunted creature. "Great God!" she exclaimed, with an intensity born of
+a sudden revelation. "Great God! and they call themselves men! And other
+men keep silence--furnish all the soil and nurture for infamy like
+that! Those who keep silence are as guilty as the rest! Those who try
+to prevent women from knowing--oh, mamma!" Her eyes were intense. She
+sprang to her feet; "and John Martin, who thinks he loves _me_ is one
+of those men! Knowing such a bill as that is pending, his indignation is
+aroused, not at the bill, not at the men who try to smuggle it through,
+not at the awful thing it implies, but that so strict a silence is not
+kept that such as _we_ may not know of it! He blames Selden Avery for
+coming to me--to us--with his splendid chivalry, and sharing with us his
+horror, making us the confidants of that inner conscience which sees,
+in the intended victims of this awful bill, his little sisters and yours
+and mine!" There were indignant tears in her eyes. She closed them, and
+her white lips were drawn tense. Presently she asked, without opening
+her eyes: "Mamma, do you suppose if you, instead of Mr. Avery, were
+chairman of that committee, that such a bill as that would ever have
+been presented? Do you suppose, if any mother on earth held the veto
+power, that such a bill would ever disgrace a statute book? Are there
+enough men, even of a class who generally go to the Legislature, who,
+in spite of their fatherhood, in spite of the fact that they have little
+sisters, are such beasts as to pass a bill like that? A ten-year-old
+girl! A mere baby! And--oh, mamma! it is too hideous to believe, even
+of--such a bill could never pass. Never on earth! Surely, Ettie Berton,
+poor little thing, has the only father living who is capable of that!"
+
+Mrs. Foster opened her lips to say that several states already had the
+law, and that one had placed the age at seven; but she checked herself.
+Her daughter's excitement was so great, she decided to wait. The
+experience of the past few months had awakened the fire in the nature of
+this strong daughter of hers. She had seen the cool, steady, previously
+indifferent, well-poised girl stirred to the very depths of her nature
+over the awful conditions of poverty, ignorance, and vice she had, for
+the first time, learned to know. Gertrude had become a regular student
+of some of the problems of life, and she had carried her studies into
+practical investigation. It had grown to be no new thing for her to
+take Francis, or Ettie, or both, when she went on these errands, and
+the study of their points of view--of the effect of it all upon their
+ignorance-soaked minds, had been one of the most touching things to her.
+Their imaginations were so stunted--so embryonic, so undeveloped that
+they saw no better way. To them, ignorance, poverty, squalor, and vice
+were a necessary part of life. Wealth, comfort, happiness, ambition
+were, naturally and rightly, perquisites, some way, some how, of the
+few.
+
+"God rules, and all is as he wishes it or it would not be that way,"
+sagely remarked Francis King, one day. It had startled Gertrude. Her
+philosophy, her observation, her reason, and her religion were in a
+state of conflict just then. She had alway supposed that she was an
+Episcopalian with all that this implied. She was beginning to doubt it
+at times.
+
+Mrs. Foster looked at her daughter now, as she sat there flushed and
+excited. She wondered what would come of it all. She had always studied
+this daughter of hers, and tried to follow the girl's moods. Now she
+thought she would cut across them.
+
+"Gertrude, you may put that bill with your letter. Mr. Avery mailed it to
+me. Of course he meant that I should show it to you if I thought best.
+I did think best, but now--but--I don't want you to excite yourself
+too--" She broke off suddenly. Her daughter's eyes were upon her in
+surprise. Mrs. Foster laughed a little nervously, and kissed the girl's
+hand as it lay in her own. "It seems rather droll for your gay little
+mother to caution you against losing control of yourself, doesn't it?"
+she asked. "You who were always all balance wheel, as your father says.
+But--"
+
+"Mamma, don't you think Mr. Avery did perfectly right to send me that
+letter and this to you?" broke in Gertrude, as if she had not heard the
+admonition of her mother, and had followed her own thoughts from some
+more distant point.
+
+"Perfectly," said her mother. "He was evidently deeply disturbed by the
+bill. He felt that you were, and should be, his confidant. He simply did
+not dream of hiding it from you, I believe. It was the spontaneous act
+of one who so loves you that his whole life--all of that which moves him
+greatly--must, as a matter of course, be open to you. I thought that
+all out when the bill came addressed to me. He--" The girl kissed her in
+silence.
+
+"You have such splendid self-respect, Gertrude. Most of us--most
+women--have none. We do not expect, do not demand, the least respect
+that is real from men. They have no respect for our opinions, and so
+upon all the real and important things of life, they hold out to us the
+sham of silence as more respectful than candor. And we--most of us--are
+weak enough to say we like it. Most of us--"
+
+Gertrude slipped down upon a cushion at the feet of her mother, and put
+her young, strong arms about the supple waist. She had of late read
+from time to time so much of the unrest and scorn back of the gay and
+compliant face of her mother. "Mamma, my real mamma," she said, softly,
+"I<am so sorry for papa that he should have missed so much, so much that
+might have been his! A mental comrade like you--"
+
+"Men of your father's generation did not want mental comrades in their
+wives, Gertrude. They--"
+
+"A telegram, Miss Gertrude," said James, drawing aside the portiere.
+
+"The bill has been rushed through. Passed. Nineteen majority. Avery."
+Gertrude read it and handed it to her mother, and both women sat as if
+stunned by a blow.
+
+
+
+
+IX.
+
+At the close of the Legislature, John Berton, professional starter, and
+his friend and ally, the father of Francis King, had returned to the
+city. Francis had grown, so her father thought, more handsome and less
+agreeable than ever. Her eyes were more dissatisfied, and she was, if
+possible, less pliant. She and Ettie Berton were working now in a store,
+and Francis said that she did not like it at all. The money she liked.
+It helped her to dress more as she wished, and then it had always
+cut Francis to the quick to be compelled to ask her father for money
+whenever she needed it, even for car fare.
+
+She had lied a good many times. Her whole nature rebelled against
+lying, but even this was easier to her than the status of dependence and
+beggary, so she had lied often about the price of shoes, or of a hat or
+dress, that there might be a trifle left over as a margin for her use in
+other ways. Her father was not unusually hard with her about money, only
+that he demanded a strict accounting before he gave it to her.
+
+"What in thunder do you want of money?" he would ask, more as a matter
+of habit than anything else. "How much 'll it take? Humph! Well, I guess
+you'll have to have it, but--" and so the ungracious manner of giving
+angered and humiliated her.
+
+"Pa, give me ten cents; I want it fer car fare. Thanks. Now fork over
+six dollars; I got to get a dress after the car gets me to the store,"
+was Ettie Berton's method. Her father would pretend not to have the
+money, and she would laugh and proceed to rifle his pockets. The scuffle
+would usually end in the girl getting more than she asked for, and was
+no unpleasant experience to her, and it appeared to amuse her father
+greatly. It was not, therefore, the same motive which actuated the two
+when they decided to try their fortunes as shop girls. The desire to be
+with Francis, to be where others were, for the sight and touch of the
+pretty things, for new faces and for mild excitement, were moving causes
+with Ettie Berton. The money she liked, too; but if she could have had
+the place without the money or the money without the place, her choice
+would have been soon made. She would stay at the store. That she was a
+general favorite was a matter of course. She would do anything for the
+other girls, and the floorwalkers and clerks found her always obedient
+and gaily willing to accept extra burdens or to change places. For some
+time past, however, she had been on a different floor from the one where
+Francis presided over a trimming counter, and the girls saw little of
+each other, except on their way to and from the store.
+
+At last this changed too, for Francis was obliged to remain to see that
+the stock of her department was properly put away. At first Ettie waited
+for her, but later on she had fallen into the habit of going with a
+child nearer her own age, a little cash girl. Ettie was barely fourteen,
+and her new friend a year or two younger. At last Francis King found
+that the motherless child had invited her new friends home with her, and
+had gone with them to their homes.
+
+As spring came on, Ettie went one Sunday to Coney Island, and did not
+tell Francis until afterward. She said that she had had a lovely time,
+hut she appeared rather disinclined to talk about it. At the Guild one
+Wednesday evening, after the class began again in the fall, Francis King
+told Gertrude this, and asked her advice. She said: "It's none o' my
+business, and she don't like me much any more, but I thought maybe I had
+ought to tell you, for--for--since I been in the store, I've learnt a
+good deal about--about things; an' Ettie she don't seem to learn much of
+anything."
+
+"Is Ettie still living at her cousin's?" asked Gertrude.
+
+"Yes," said Francis, scornfully, "but she 'bout as well be livin' by
+herself. Her cousin's always just gaddin' 'round tryin' t' get
+married. I never did see such an awful fool. Before Et's pa went to the
+Legislature, we all did think he was goin' t' marry her, but now--"
+
+"Legislative honors have turned his head, have they?" smiled Gertrude,
+intent on her own thoughts in another direction. She was not, therefore,
+prepared for the sudden fling of temper in the strange girl beside
+her. "Yes, it has; 'n if it don't turn some other way before long,
+I'll break his neck for him. _I_ ain't marryin' a widower if I do like
+Ettie."
+
+In spite of herself, Gertrude started a little. She looked at Francis
+quite steadily for a moment, and then said: "Could you and Ettie come
+to my house and spend the day next Sunday? I'm glad you told me of
+Ettie's--of--about the change in her manner toward you."
+
+"Don't let on that I told you anything," said Francis, as they parted.
+
+Since they had been in the store they had not gone regularly to the
+weekly evening Guild meetings, and Gertrude had seen less of them. She
+was surprised, however, on the following Sunday, to see the strange,
+mysterious change in Ettie. A part of her frank, open, childish manner
+was gone, and yet nothing more mature had taken its place. There would
+be flashes of her usual manner, but long silences, quite foreign to the
+child, would follow. At the dinner table she grew deadly ill, and had to
+be taken up stairs. Gertrude tucked a soft cover about her on the couch
+in her own room, and gave her smelling salts and a trifle of wine. The
+child drank the wine but began to cry.
+
+"Oh, don't cry, Ettie," said Gertrude, stroking her hair gently. "You'll
+be over it in a little while. I think our dining-room is much warmer
+than yours, and it was very hot to-day. Then your trying to eat the
+olives when you don't like them, might easily make you sick. You'll be
+all right after a little I'm sure. Don't cry."
+
+"That's the same kind of wine I had that day at Coney Island," she said,
+and Gertrude thought how irrelevant the remark was, and how purely of
+physical origin were the tears of such a child.
+
+"Would you like a little more?" asked Gertrude, smiling.
+
+Ettie shivered, and closed her eyes.
+
+"No; I don't like it. I guess it ain't polite to say so, but--Oh, of
+course _maybe_ I'd like it if I was well, but it made me sick that time,
+an' so I don't like it now when I _am_ sick." She laughed in a childish
+way, and then she drew Gertrude's face down near her own. "Say, I'll
+tell you the solemn truth. It made me tight that day. He told me so
+afterwards, n' I guess it did."
+
+Here was a revelation, indeed. Gertrude stroked the fluffy hair, gently.
+She was trying to think of just the right thing to say. It was growing
+dark in the room. Ettie reached up again and drew Gertrude's face
+down. "Say," she whispered, "you won't be mad at me for that, will you?
+He told me I wasn't to blab to anybody; but it always seems as if you
+wouldn't be mad at me, and"--she began to weep again.
+
+"Don't cry," said Gertrude, again, gently. "Of course I am not angry
+with you. I am sorry it happened, but--Ettie, who is _he?_" Ettie sobbed
+on, and held her arms close about Gertrude's neck. Again the older girl
+said, with lips close to the child's ear:
+
+"Don't you think it would be better to tell me who 'he' is? Is he so
+young as to not know better than to advise you that way, dear?"
+
+"He's forty," sobbed Ettie, "an' he's rich, an' he's got a girl of his
+own as big as me. I saw her one day in the store. He's the cashier."
+
+Gertrude shivered, and the child felt the movement.
+
+"Don't you ever, ever tell," she panted, "or he'll kill me--and so would
+pa."
+
+"Oh, he would, would he?" exclaimed Francis, who had stolen silently
+into the room and had stood unobserved in the darkness. "The cashier!
+the mean devil! I always hated his beady eyes, and he tried his games on
+me! But I'll kill him before he shall go--do you any real harm, Ettie! I
+will! I will! Why didn't you tell me? I watched for a while and then I
+thought--I thought he had given it up. Oh, Ettie, Ettie!" The tall form
+of the girl seemed to rise even higher in the darkness, and one could
+feel the fire of her great eyes. Her hands were clenched and her muscles
+tense.
+
+Ettie was sobbing anew, and Gertrude, holding her hand, was stroking the
+moist forehead and trying to quiet her.
+
+"Oh, Fan! Oh, Fan! I didn't want you to know," sobbed the child, with
+pauses between her words. "He said nobody needn't ever know if I'd do
+just's he told me. He said--but when pa came home I was so scared, an'
+I'm sick most all the time, an'--an', oh, if I wasn't so awful afraid
+to die I'd wisht I _was_ dead!"
+
+"Dead!" gasped Francis, grasping Ettie's wrist and pulling her hand
+from her face in a frenzy of the new light that was dawning upon her
+half-dazed but intensely stimulated mental faculties. She half pulled
+the smaller girl to her feet.
+
+"Dead! Ettie Berton, you tell me the God's truth or I'll tear him to
+pieces right in the store. You tell me the God's truth! has he--done
+anything awful to you?" A young tiger could not have seemed more savage,
+and Ettie clung with her other arm to Gertrude.
+
+"No! No! No!" she shrieked, and struggled to free herself from the
+clutch upon her wrist. Then with the pathetic superstition and ignorance
+of her type: "Cross my heart I Hope I may die!" she added, and as
+Francis relaxed her grasp upon the wrist, Ettie fell in an unconscious
+little heap upon the floor.
+
+Francis was upon her knees beside her in an instant, and Gertrude was
+about to ring for a light and for her mother when Francis moaned: "Oh,
+send for a doctor, quick. Send for a doctor! She was lying and she
+crossed her heart. She will die! She will die!"
+
+
+
+
+X.
+
+But Ettie Berton did not die. Perhaps it would have been quite as well
+for her if she had died before the impotent and frantic rage of
+her father had still further darkened the pathetically appealing,
+love-hungry little heart, whose every beat had been a throbbing, eager
+desire to be liked, to please, to acquiesce; to the end that she should
+escape blame, that she might sail on the smooth and pleasant sea of
+general praise and approval.
+
+Alas, the temperament which had brought her the dangerous stimulus of
+praise, for self-effacement, had joined hands with opportunity to wreck
+the child's life--and no one was more bitter in his denunciation than
+her father's friend and her aforetime admirer--Representative King.
+"If she was a daughter o' mine I'd kill her," he repeated to his own
+household day after day. "She sh'd never darken _my_ door agin. That's
+mighty certain. It made me mad the other day to hear Berton talk about
+takin' her back home. The old fool! What does he want of her? An' what
+kind of an example that I'd like t' know t' set t' decent girls? I told
+him right then an' there if he let his soft heart do him that a'way I
+was done with him for good an' all, n' if I ketch you a goin' up there
+t' see her agin, you can just stay away from here, that's all!" This
+last had been to Francis, and Francis had shut her teeth together very
+hard, and the glitter in her eyes might have indicated to a wiser man
+that it was not chiefly because of his presence there that this daughter
+cared to return to her home after her clandestine visits to Ettie
+Berton. A wiser man, too, might have guessed that the prohibition would
+not prohibit, and that poor little Ettie Berton would not be deserted by
+her loyal friend because of his displeasure.
+
+"I have told her that she may live with us by and by," said Gertrude to
+Seldon Avery one afternoon; "but that is no solution of the problem.
+And besides it is her father's duty to care for her and to do it without
+hurting the child's feelings, too. Can't you go to him and have a talk
+with him? You say he seems a kind-hearted, well-meaning, easily-led man.
+Beside, he has no right to blame her. He has done more than any one else
+in this state to make the path of the cashier easy and smooth. If it
+were not for poor little Ettie I should be heartily glad of it all--of
+the lesson for him. Can't you go to him and to that Mr. King and make
+them see the infamy of their work, and force them to undo it? Can't you?
+Is there no way?"
+
+Avery had gone. He argued in vain. "Why do you blame the cashier," he
+had said to Berton. "He has committed no legal offence. Our laws say he
+has done no wrong. Then why blame him? Why blame Ettie? She is a mere
+yielding, impulsive child, and, surely, if he has done no wrong she has
+not. If--"
+
+"Now look a-here, Mr. Avery," said John Berton, hotly, "I know what
+you're a-hittin' at an' you can jest save your breath. I didn't help
+pass that law t' apply to _my_ girl, n' you know it damned well. I ain't
+in no mood just now t' have you throw it up to me that she was about
+the first one it ketched, neather. How was I a-goin' to know that? That
+there bill wasn't intended t' apply t' _my_ girl, I tell you. An' then
+she hadn't ought to a said she went with him willin'ly, either. If she
+hadn't a said that we could a peppered him, but as it is he's all right,
+an--"
+
+"That is what the law contemplates, isn't it?--for other girls, of
+course, not for yours," began Avery, whose natural impulses of kindness
+and generosity he was holding back.
+
+"Now you hold on!" exclaimed Berton, feebly groping about for a reply.
+"You know I never got up that bill. You know mighty well the man that
+got it up an' come there an' lobbied for it, was one o' _your_ own
+kind--a silk stocking.
+
+"You know I only started it 'n' sort o' fathered it for _him_. I ain't
+no more to blame than the others. Go 'n talk t' them. I've had my dose.
+Go 'n talk t' King. He says yet that it's a mighty good bill--but I
+ain't so damned certain as I was. It don't look 's reasonable t' me's it
+did last session." Avery left him, in the hope that a little later on
+he would conclude that his present attitude toward his daughter might
+undergo like modification, with advantage to all concerned. It was early
+in the evening, and Avery concluded to step into a workingman's club on
+his way to his lodgings. He had no sooner entered the door, than someone
+recognized him as the candidate of a year ago. There was an immediate
+demand that he give them a speech. He had had no thought of speaking,
+but the opening tempted him, and the hand clapping was indent. The
+chairman introduced him as "the only kid-glove member in the last
+Legislature who didn't sell his soul, to monopoly, and put a mortgage on
+his heavenly home at the behest of Wall Street."
+
+The applause which met this sally was long sustained, and the laughter,
+while hearty, was not altogether pleasant of tone. Avery stood until
+there was silence. Then he began with a quiet smile.
+
+"Mr. Chairman and gentlemen." He paused, and looked over the room again.
+"I beg your pardon. I am accustomed to face men only. Mr. Chairman,
+_ladies_ and gentlemen." There was a ripple of laughter over the room.
+"Let me say how glad I am to make that amendment, and how glad I shall
+be, for one, when I am able to make it in the body to which I have the
+honor to belong--the Legislature." Some one said: "ah, there," but he
+did not pause. "You labor men have taken the right view of it in this
+club. There is not a question, not one, in all the domain of labor or
+legislation which does not strike at woman's welfare as vitally as it
+does at man's; not one." There was feeble applause. "But I will go
+further. I will say, there is not only not an economic question which is
+not _as_ vital to her, but it is far _more_ vital than it is to man. The
+very fact of her present legal status rests upon the other awful fact of
+her absolute financial dependence upon men." Someone laughed, and Avery
+fired up. "This one fact has made sex maniacs of men, and peopled this
+world with criminals, lunatics, and liars! This one fact! This one
+fact!"
+
+His intensity had at last forced silence, and quieted those members who
+were at first inclined to take as a gallant joke his opening remarks.
+"Let me take a text, for what I want to say to you on the economic
+question, from the Bible.
+
+"Oh, give us a rest!"
+
+"Suffer little children!"
+
+"Remember the Sabbath day!" and like derisive calls, mingled with a
+laugh and distinct hisses. The gavel beat in vain; Avery waited. At last
+there was silence, and he said: "I was not joking. The fact that you
+all know me as a freethinker misled you; but although I did say that
+I wished to take as a sort of text a passage from the Bible, I was in
+earnest. This is the text: 'The rich man's wealth is his strong city;
+the destruction of the poor is their poverty.' Again there was a laugh,
+with a different ring to it, and clapping of hands.
+
+"I think that I may assume," he went on, "that no audience before
+which I am likely to appear, will suspect me of accepting the Bible as
+altogether admirable. Some of the prophets and holy men of old, as I
+read of their doings in the scriptures, always impress me as having been
+long overdue at the penitentiary."
+
+There was laughter and applause at this sally, and the intangible
+something which emanates from an audience which tells a speaker that he
+now has a mental grasp upon his hearers, made itself felt. The slight
+air of resentment which arose when he had said that he should refer for
+his authority to the Bible subsided, and he went on.
+
+"But notwithstanding these facts and opinions, one sometimes finds in
+the Bible things that are true. Sometimes they are not only true, but
+they are also good. Again they are good in fact, in sentiment, and in
+diction. Now when this sort of conjunction occurs, I am strongly moved
+to drop for the time such differences as I may have with other portions
+and sentiments, and give due credit where credit is due.
+
+"Therefore, when I find in the tenth chapter of Proverbs this: 'The rich
+man's wealth is his strong city; the destruction of the poor is their
+poverty,' I shake hands with the author, and travel with him for this
+trip at least. The prophet does not say that their destruction is
+ignorance, or vice, or sin, or any of the ordinary blossoms of poverty
+which it is the fashion to refer to as its root. He tells us the
+truth--the destruction of the poor _is_ their _poverty._
+
+"And who are the poor? Are they not those who, in spite of their labor,
+their worth, and their value to the state as good citizens are still
+dependent upon the good-will--the charity, I had almost said--of someone
+else who has power over the very food they have earned a hundred times
+over, and the miserable rags they are allowed to wear instead of the
+broadcloth they have earned? Are they not those who, because of economic
+conditions, are suppliants where they should be sovereign citizens,
+dependents where they should be free and independent and self-respecting
+persons?"
+
+"Right you are!" "Drive it home!" came with the applause from the
+audience.
+
+"Are they not those who must obey oppressive laws made by those who
+legislate against the helpless and in favor of the powerful? Are they
+not those whose voices are silenced by subjection, whose wishes and
+needs are trampled beneath the feet of the controlling class?"
+
+The applause was ready now and instant. Avery paused. There was silence.
+"And who are these?" he asked, and paused again.
+
+"What class of people more than any other--more than all others--fits
+and fills each and every one of these queries?" "Laboring men!" shouted
+several. "All of us!" "No," said Avery, "you are wrong. To all of
+you--to all so-called laboring men they do apply; but more than to
+these, in more insidious ways, do they apply to laboring women. To all
+women, in fact; for no matter how poor a man is, his wife and daughters
+are poorer; no matter how much of a dependent he is, the woman is more
+so, for she is the dependent of a dependent, the serf of a slave, the
+chattel of a chattel! The suppliant, not only for work and wage, but the
+suppliant at the hands of sex power for equality with even the man who
+is under the feet and the tyranny of wealth. They share together that
+tyranny and poverty, but he thrusts upon her alone the added outrage of
+sex subjugation and legal disability." He paused, and held up his hand.
+Then he said, slowly, making each word stand alone:--
+
+"And I tell you, gentlemen, with my one term's experience in the
+Legislature and what it has taught me--I tell you that there is no
+outrage which wealth and power can commit upon man that it cannot and
+does not commit doubly upon woman! There is no cruelty upon all this
+cruel earth half so terrible as the tyranny of sex! And again, I tell
+you that to woman every man is a capitalist in wealth and in power, and
+I reiterate:--the destruction of the poor is their _poverty._ It has
+been doubly woman's destruction. Her absolute financial dependence upon
+men has given him the power and--alas, that I should be compelled to say
+it!--the will, to deny her all that is best and loftiest in life,
+and even to crush out of her the love of liberty and the dignity of
+character which cares for the better things. Look at her education! Look
+at the disgraceful 'annexes' and side shifts which are made to prevent
+our sisters from acquiring even the same, or as good, an education as we
+claim for ourselves. Look--" He paused and lowered his voice. "Look at
+the awful, the horrible, the beastly laws we pass for women, while
+we carefully keep them in a position where they cannot legislate for
+themselves. Do you know there is no law in any state--and no legislature
+would dare try to pass one--which would bind a ten-year-old boy to any
+contract which he might have been led, driven, or coaxed into, or have
+voluntarily made, if that contract should henceforth deprive him of all
+that gives to him the comforts, joys, or decencies of life! All men hold
+that such a boy is not old enough to make such a contract. That any
+one older than he, who leads him into a crime or misdemeanor, or the
+transfer of property, or his personal rights and liberty, is guilty of
+legal offence. The boy is without blame, and his contract is absolutely
+void--illegal. But in more than one state we hold that a little girl of
+ten may make the most fatal contract ever made by or for woman, and that
+she is old enough to be held legally responsible for her act and for her
+judgment. The one who leads her into it, though he be forty, fifty, or
+sixty years old, is guiltless before the law. I tell you, gentlemen,
+there is no crime possible to humanity that is as black as that infamous
+law, sought to be re-enacted by our own state at this very time, and
+which has already passed one house!" He explained, as delicately as he
+could, the full scope and meaning of the bill. Surprise, consternation,
+swept over the room. Men, a few of whom had heard of the bill before,
+but had given it scant attention, saw a horror and disgust in the
+eyes of the women which aroused for the first time in their minds, a
+flickering sense of the enormity of such a measure. No one present
+was willing that any woman should believe him guilty of approving such
+legislation, and yet Avery impressed anew upon them that the bill had
+passed one house with a good majority. On his way out of the room, a
+tall girl stepped to his side.
+
+For the moment he had not recognized her. It was Francis King. She
+looked straight at him.
+
+"Did my father vote for that bill?" she asked, without a prelude of
+greeting. Avery hesitated.
+
+"Oh, is it you, Miss King?" he asked, "I did not see you before. Do you
+come here often?"
+
+"Not very," she said, still looking at him, and with fire gathering in
+her eyes. "Did my father vote for that bill?" she repeated.
+
+"Ah--I--to tell you the truth," began Avery, but she put out her hand
+and caught firm hold of his arm.
+
+"Did my father vote for that bill?" she insisted, and Avery said:
+--"Yes, I'm sorry to say, he did, Miss King; but--so many did, you know.
+The fact is--"
+
+Her fingers grasped his arm like a vice, and her lips were drawn. "Did
+Ettie's pa?" she demanded.
+
+Avery saw the drift of her thought.
+
+"God forgive him! yes," he said, and his own eyes grew troubled and
+sympathetic.
+
+"God may forgave him if he's a mind to," exclaimed Francis, "but I don't
+want no such God around me, if he does. Any God that wants to forgive
+men for such work as that ain't fit to associate with no other kind of
+folks _but_ such men; but I don't mean to allow a good little girl like
+Ettie to live in the same house with a beast if I know it. She shan't
+go home again now, not if her pa begs on his knees. He ain't fit to wipe
+her shoes. 'N my pa!" she exclaimed, scornfully. "My pa talkin' about
+Ettie being bad, and settin' bad examples for decent girls! Him a
+talkin'! Him livin' in the same house with my little sister 'n me! Him!"
+The girl was wrought to a frenzy of scorn, and contempt, and anger. They
+had passed out with the rest into the street.
+
+"Shall I walk home with you?" asked Avery. "Are you alone?"
+
+"Yes, I'm alone," she said, with a little dry sob. "I'm alone, an' I
+ain't goin' home any more. Not while he lives there. It's no decent
+place for a girl--living in the house with a man like that. I ain't
+goin' home. I'm goin' to--" It rushed over her brain that she had no
+other place to go. She held her purse in her hand; it had only two
+dollars and a few cents in it. She had bought her new dress with the
+rest. Her step faltered, but her eyes were as fiery and as hard as ever.
+
+"You'd better go home," said Avery, softly. "It will only be the harder
+for you, if you don't. I'm sorry--"
+
+She turned on him like a tigress. They were in Union Square now. "Even
+_you_ think it is all right for good girls to be under the control and
+live with men like that! Even _you_ think I ought to go home, an' let
+him boss me an' make rules fer me, an' me pretend to like it an believe
+as he does, an' look up to him, an' think his way's right an' best! Even
+_you!_"
+
+"No, no," said Avery, softly. "You must be fair, Miss King. I don't
+think it's right; but--but--I said it was best just now, for--what else
+can you do?" The girl was facing him as they stood near the fountain in
+the middle of the square.
+
+"That's just what I was meaning to show to-night when I said what I
+did to the club, of the financial dependence of women; it is their
+destruction; it destroys their self-respect; it forces them to accept a
+moral companionship which they'd scorn if they dared; it forces them to
+seem to condone and uphold such things themselves; it forces them to
+be the companions and subordinates of degraded moral natures, that hold
+wives and daughters to a code which they will not apply to themselves,
+and which they seek to make void for other wives and daughters;
+it--" "You told me to go home," she said, stubbornly. "I'm not goin'! I
+make money enough to live on. I always spent it on--on things to wear;
+but--but I can live on it, an' I'm goin' to. I ain't goin' to live in
+the house with no such a man. He ain't _fit_ to live with. I won't tell
+ma an' the girls--yet; not till--"
+
+She paused, and peered toward the clock in the face of the great stone
+building across the street. "Do you think it's too late fer me t' talk
+a minute with Miss Gertrude?" she asked, with her direct gaze, again.
+"She'd let me stay there one night, I guess, n' she'd tell me--I c'd
+talk to her some."
+
+"If you won't go home," he said, slowly, "I suppose it would be best
+for you to go there, but--it is rather late. Go home for to-night, Miss
+Francis! I wish you would. Think it over to-night, please. Let me take
+you home to-night. Go to Miss Gertrude to-morrow, and talk it over." His
+tone had grown gentle and more tender than he knew. He took the hand she
+had placed on his arm in his own, and tried to turn toward her street.
+She held stubbornly back. "For my sake, to please me--because I think
+it is best--won't you go home to-night?" She looked at him again, and
+a haze came in her eyes. She did not trust herself to speak, but she
+turned toward her own street, and they walked silently down the square.
+His hand still held her own as it lay on his arm.
+
+"Thank you," he said, and pressed her fingers more firmly for an instant
+and then released them. He had taken his glove off in the hall and had
+not replaced it. When they reached the door of her father's house, she
+suddenly grasped his ungloved hand and kissed it, and ran sobbing up the
+steps and into the house without a word.
+
+"Poor girl," thought Avery, "she is not herself to-night. She has never
+respected nor loved her father much, but this was a phase of his nature
+she had not suspected before. Poor child! I hope Gertrude--" and in the
+selfishness of the love he bore for Gertrude, he allowed his thoughts
+to wander, and it did not enter his mind to place anything deeper than
+a mere emotional significance upon the conduct of the intense, tall,
+dark-eyed girl who had just left him.
+
+He did not dream that at that moment she lay face down on her bed
+sobbing as if her heart would break, and yet, that a strange little
+flutter of happiness touched her heart as she held her gloved hand
+against her flushed cheek or kissed it in the darkness. It was the hand
+Avery had held so long within his own, as it lay upon his arm. At last
+the girl drew the glove off, and going to her drawer, took out her
+finest handkerchief and lay the glove within, wrapping it softly and
+carefully. She was breathing hard, and her face was set and pained.
+At two o'clock she had fallen asleep, and under her tear-stained cheek
+there was a glove folded in a bit of soft cambric. Poor Francis King!
+The world is a sorry place for such as you, and even those who would be
+your best friends often deal the deadliest wounds. Poor Francis King!
+Has life nothing to offer you but a worn glove and a tear-stained bit
+of cambric? Is it true? Need it be true? Is there no better way? Have
+we built your house with but one door, and with no window? Smile at the
+fancies of your sleep, child; to-morrow will bring memory, reality,
+and tears. You are a woman now. Yesterday you were but an unformed,
+strong-willed girl. Poor Francis King! sleep late to-morrow, and dream
+happily if you can. Poor Francis King, to-morrow is very near!
+
+
+
+
+XI.
+
+"Gertrude!" called out her mother to the girl, as she passed the library
+door. "Gertrude! come in, your father and I wish to talk with you."
+
+"Committee meeting?" laughed Gertrude, as she took a seat beside her
+father. It had grown to be rather a joke in the family to speak of Mr.
+Avery's calls as committee meetings, and Mr. Foster had tried vainly to
+tease his daughter about it.
+
+"In my time," he would say, "we did not go a courting to get advice.
+we went for kisses. I never discussed any more profound topic with my
+sweetheart than love--and perhaps poetry and music. Sometimes, as I sit
+and listen to you two, I can't half believe that you are lovers. It's so
+perfectly absurd. You talk about everything on earth. It's a deal more
+like--why I should have looked upon that sort of thing as a species of
+committee meeting, in my day."
+
+Gertrude had laughed and said something about thinking that love ought
+to enter into and run through all the interests of life, and not be held
+merely as a thing apart. All women had a life to live. All would not
+have the love. So the first problem was one of life and its work. The
+love was only a phase of this. But her father had gone on laughing at
+her about her queer love-making.
+
+"Committee meeting?" asked she, again, as she glanced at her father,
+smiling dryly. Her mother answered first.
+
+"Yes--no--partly. Your father wanted to speak to you about--he thinks
+you should not be seen with, or have those girls--You tell her yourself,
+dear," she said, appealing to her husband. Mr. Foster was fidgeting
+about in his chair; he had not felt comfortable before. He was less so
+now, for Gertrude had turned her face full upon him, and her hand was on
+his sleeve.
+
+"'Well, there's nothing to tell, Gertrude," he said. "I guess you
+can understand it without a scene. I simply don't want to see those
+girls--that King girl and her friend--about here any more. It won't do.
+It simply won't do at all. You'll be talked about. Of course, I know it
+is all very kind of you, and all that, and that you don't mean any
+harm; but men always have drawn, and they always will draw, unpleasant
+conclusions. They may sympathize with that sort of girls, but they
+simply won't stand having their own women folks associate with them. The
+test of the respectability of a woman, is whether a man of position will
+marry her or not. A man's respectable if he's out of jail. A woman if
+she is marriageable or married. Now, unfortunately, that little Berton
+girl is neither the one nor the other, and its going to make talk if you
+are seen with her again. She must stay away from here, too."
+
+There had come a most unusual tone of protest into his voice as he went
+on, but he had looked steadily at a carved paper knife, which he held in
+his hand, and with which he cut imaginary leaves upon the table. There
+was a painful silence. Gertrude thought she did not remember having ever
+before heard her father speak so sharply. She glanced at her mother,
+but Katherine Foster had evidently made up her mind to leave this matter
+entirely in the hands of her husband.
+
+"Do you mean, papa, that you wish me to tell that child, Ettie Berton,
+not to come here any more, and that I must not befriend her?" asked
+Gertrude, in an unsteady voice.
+
+"Befriend her all you've a mind to," responded her father, heartily.
+"Certainly. Of course. But don't have her come here, and don't you be
+seen with her, nor the other one again. You can send James or Susan
+--better not send Susan though--send James with money or anything you
+want to give her. Your mother tells me you are paying the Berton girl's
+board. That's all right if you want to, but--your mother has told me the
+whole outrageous story, and that cashier ought to be shot, but--"
+
+"But instead of helping make the public opinion which would make him
+less, and Ettie more, respectable, you ask me to help along the present
+infamous order of things! Oh, papa! don't ask that of me! I have never
+willingly done anything in my life that I knew you disapproved. Don't
+ask me to help crush that child now, for I cannot. I cannot desert her
+now. Don't ask that of me, papa. Why do men--even you good men--make it
+so hard, so almost impossible for women to be kind to each other? What
+has Ettie done that such as we should hold her to account. She is a
+mere child. Fourteen years old in fact, but not over ten in feeling or
+judgment. She has been deceived by one who fully understood. She did
+not. And yet _even you_ ask me to hold her responsible! Oh, papa,
+don't!" She slipped onto her father's knee and took his face in her
+hands and kissed his forehead. She had never in her life stood against
+her father or seemed to criticise him before. It hurt her and it vexed
+him. A little frown came on his face. "Katherine," he said, turning to
+his wife, "I wish you'd make Gertrude understand this thing rationally.
+_You_ always have." Mrs. Foster glanced at her daughter and then at her
+husband. She smiled.
+
+"I always have, what dear?" she asked.
+
+"Understood these things as I do--as everyone does," said her husband.
+"You never took these freaks that Gertrude is growing into, and--"
+
+The daughter winced and sat far back on her father's knee. Her mother
+did not miss the action. She smiled at the girl, but her voice was
+steady, and less light than usual.
+
+"No, I never took freaks, as you say, but what I thought of things, or
+how I may or may not have understood them, dear, no one ever inquired,
+no one ever cared to know. That I acted like other people, and
+acquiesced in established opinions, went without saying. That was
+expected of me. That I did. Gertrude belongs to another generation,
+dear. She cannot be so colorless as we women of my time--"
+
+Her husband laughed.
+
+"Colorless, is good, by Jove! _You_ colorless indeed!" He looked
+admiringly at his wife. "Why, Katherine, you have more color and more
+sense now than any half dozen girls of this generation. Colorless
+indeed!" Mrs. Foster smiled. "Don't you think my cheerful, easy
+reflection of your own shades of thought or mind have always passed
+current as my own? Sometimes I fancy that is true, and that--it is
+easier and--pleasanter all around. But--" she paused. "It was not my
+color, my thought, my opinions, myself. It was an echo, dear; a pleasant
+echo of yourself which has so charmed you. It was not I."
+
+Gertrude felt uneasy, and as if she were lifting a curtain which had
+been long drawn. Her father turned his face towards her and then toward
+her mother.
+
+"In God's name what does all this mean?" he asked. "Are you, the
+most level-headed woman in the world, intending to uphold Gertrude in
+this--suicidal policy--her--this--absurd nonsense about that girl?"
+
+Gertrude's eyes widened. She slowly arose from his knee. The revelation
+as to her father's mental outlook was, to her more sensitive and
+developed nature, much what the one had been to Francis King that night
+at the club.
+
+"Oh, papa," she said softly. "I am so sorry for--so sorry--for us all.
+We seem so far apart, and--"
+
+"John Martin agrees with me perfectly," said her father, hotly. "I
+talked with him to-day. He--"
+
+Gertrude glanced at her mother, and there was a definite curl upon her
+lip. "Mr. Martin," she said slowly, "is not a conscience for me. He and
+I are leagues apart, papa. We--"
+
+"More's the pity," said her father, as he arose from his chair. He moved
+toward the door.
+
+"I've said my say, Gertrude. It's perfectly incomprehensible to me what
+you two are aiming at. But what I know is this: you must _do_ my way in
+this particular case, think whatever you please. You know very well I
+would not ask it except for your own good. I don't like to interfere
+with your plans, but--you must give that girl up." He spoke kindly, but
+Gertrude and her mother sat silent long after he had gone. The twilight
+had passed into darkness. Presently Katherine's voice broke the
+silence:--
+
+"Shall you float with the tide, daughter, or shall you try to swim up
+stream?" She was thinking of the first talk they had ever had on these
+subjects, nearly two years ago now, but the girl recognized the old
+question. She stood up slowly and then with quick steps came to her
+mother's side.
+
+"Don't try to swim with me, mamma. It only makes it harder for me to see
+you hurt in the struggle. Don't try to help me any more when the eddies
+come. Float, mamma; I shall swim. I shall! I shall! And while my head is
+above the waves that poor little girl shall not sink."
+
+She was stroking Katherine's hair, and her mother's hand drew her own
+down to a soft cheek.
+
+"Am I right, mother?" she asked, softly. "If you say I am right, it is
+enough. My heart will ache to seem to papa to do wrong, but I can bear
+it better than I could bear my own self-contempt. Am I right, mamma?"
+
+Her mother drew her hand to her lips, and then with a quick action she
+threw both arms about the girl and whispered in her ear: "I shall go
+back to the old way. Swim if you can, daughter. You are right. If only
+you are strong enough. That is the question. If only you are strong
+enough. I am not. I shall remain in the old way." There was a steadiness
+and calm in her voice which matched oddly enough with the fire in her
+eyes and the flush on her cheeks.
+
+"Little mother, little mother," murmured Gertrude, softly, as she
+stroked her mother's hand. Then she kissed her and left the room. "With
+her splendid spirit, that _she_ should be broken on the wheel!" the girl
+said aloud to herself, when she had reached her own room. She did not
+light the gas, but sat by the window watching the passers-by in the
+street.
+
+"Why should papa have sent me to college," she was thinking, "where I
+matched my brains and thoughts with men, if I was to stifle them later
+on, and subordinate them to brains I found no better than my own? Why
+should my conscience be developed, if it must not be used; if I must use
+as my guide the conscience of another? Why should I have a separate and
+distinct nature in all things, if I may use only that part of it which
+conforms to those who have not the same in type or kind? I will do what
+seems right to myself. I shall not desert--"
+
+She laid her cheek in her hand and sighed. A new train of thought was
+rising. It had never come to her before.
+
+"It is my father's money. He says I may send it, but I may not--it is my
+father's money. He has the right to say how it may be used, and--and--"
+(the blood was coming into her face) "I have nothing but what he gives
+me. He wants a pleasant home; he pays for it. Susan and James, and the
+rest, he hires to conduct the labor of the house. If they do not do it
+to please him--if they are not willing to--they have no right to stay,
+and then to complain. For his social life at home he has mamma and me.
+If he wants--" She was walking up and down the room now. "Have we a
+right to dictate? We have our places in _his_ home. We are not paid
+wages like James and Susan, but--but--we are given what we have; we are
+dependent. He has never refused us anything--any sum we wanted--but he
+can. It is in his power, and really we do not know but that he should.
+Perhaps we spend too much. We do not know. What can he afford? I do not
+know. What can _I_ afford?" She spread her hands out before her, palms
+up, in the darkness. She could see them by the flicker of the electric
+light in the street.
+
+"They are empty," she said, aloud, "and they are untrained, and they
+are helpless. They are a pauper's hands." She smiled a little at the
+conceit, and then, slowly: "It sounds absurd, almost funny, but it is
+true. A pauper in lace and gold! I am over twenty-two. I am as much a
+dependent and a pauper as if I were in a poorhouse. Love and kindness
+save me! They have not saved Ettie, nor Francis. When the day came they
+were compelled to yield utterly, or go. They can work, and I? I am a
+dependent. Have I a right to stand against the will and pleasure of my
+father, when by doing so I compel him to seem to sustain and support
+that which he disapproves? Have I a right to do that?"
+
+She was standing close to the window now, and she put her hot face
+against the glass. "The problem is easy enough, if all think alike--if
+one does not think at all; but now? I cannot follow my own conscience
+and my father's too. We do not think alike. Is it right that I should,
+to buy his approval and smiles, violate my own mind, and brain, and
+heart? But is it right for me to violate _his_ sense of what is right,
+while I live upon the lavish and loving bounty which he provides?"
+And so, with her developed conscience, and reason, and individuality,
+Gertrude had come to face the same problem, which, in its more brutal
+form, had resulted so sorrowfully for the two girls whom she had hoped
+to befriend. The ultimate question of individual domination of one by
+another, with the purse as the final appeal--and even this strong and
+fortunate girl wavered. "Shall I swim, after all? Have I the right to
+try?" she asked herself.
+
+
+
+
+XII.
+
+When Francis King told Mr. Avery that she could and would leave her
+father's home and live upon the money she earned, and had heretofore
+looked upon as merely a resource to save her pride, she did not take
+into consideration certain very important facts, not the least of which
+was, perhaps, that her presence at the store was not wholly a pleasant
+thing for the cashier to contemplate under existing circumstances.
+
+Francis King was not a diplomat. The cashier was not a martyr. These two
+facts, added to the girl's scornful eyes, rendered the position in the
+trimming department far less secure than she had grown to believe.
+
+So when she came to the little room which Gertrude Foster had provided
+as a temporary home for Ettie Berton, she felt that she came as a help
+and protector and not at all as a possible encumbrance.
+
+"I've had a terrible blow-out with pa," she said, bitterly. "I can't
+go home any more if I wanted to--and I don't want to. I told him what I
+thought of him, and of your--and of the kind of men that make mean laws
+they are ashamed to have their own folks know about and live by. He was
+awful mad. He said laws was none o' my business, and he guessed men knew
+best what was right an' good for women."
+
+"Of course they do," said Ettie with her ever ready acquiescence. "I
+reckon you didn't want t' deny _that,_ did you Fan? You 'n your pa must
+a' shook hands for once anyhow," she laughed. "How'd it feel? Didn't you
+like agreein' with him once?" Francis looked at the child--this pitiful
+illustration of the theory of yielding acquiescence; this legitimate
+blossom of the tree of ignorance and soft-hearted dependence; this poor
+little dwarf of individuality; this helpless echo of masculine measures,
+methods, and morals--and wondered vaguely why it was that the more
+helpless the victim, the more complete her disaster, the more certain
+was she to accept, believe in, and support the very cause and root of
+her undoing.
+
+Francis King's own mental processes were too disjointed and
+ill-formulated to enable her to express the half-formed thoughts that
+came to her. Her heart ached for her little friend to whom to-day was
+always welcome, and to whom to-morrow never appeared a possibility other
+than that it would be sunshiny, and warm, and comfortable.
+
+Francis saw a certain to-morrow which should come to Ettie, far more
+clearly than did the child herself, and seeing, sighed. Her impulse was
+to argue the case hotly with Ettie, as she had done with her father; but
+she looked at her face again, and then, as a sort of safety-valve for
+her own emotion, succinctly said: "Ettie Berton, you are the biggest
+fool I ever saw."
+
+Ettie clapped her hands.
+
+"Right you are, says Moses!" she exclaimed, laughing gleefully, "and you
+like me for it. Folks with sense like fools. Sense makes people so awful
+uncomfortable. Say, where'd you get that bird on your hat? Out 'o stock?
+Did that old mean thing make you pay full price? Goodness! how I do wish
+I could go back t' store!"
+
+"Ettie, how'd you like for me to come here an live with you? Do you
+'spose Miss Gertrude would care?"
+
+"Hurrah for Cleveland!" exclaimed Ettie, springing to her feet and
+throwing her arms about Francis. "Hurrah for Grant! Gracious, but I'm
+glad! I'm just so lonesome I had to make my teeth ache for company," she
+rattled on. "Miss Gertrude 'll be glad, too. She said she wisht I had
+somebody 't take care of me. But, gracious! I don't need that. They
+ain't nothing to do but just set still n' wait. It's the waitin' now
+that makes me so lonesome. I want t' hurry 'n get back t' the store,
+'n--"
+
+She noticed Francis's look of surprise, not unmixed with frank scorn;
+but she did not rightly interpret it.
+
+"My place ain't gone is it, Fan?" she asked, in real alarm. "He said
+he'd keep it for me."
+
+"Ettie Berton, you are the biggest fool I ever saw," said Francis,
+again, this time with a touch of hopelessness and pathos in her voice,
+and at that moment there was a rap at the door. It was one of the cash
+girls from the store. She handed Francis a note, and while Ettie and
+the visitor talked gaily of the store, Francis read and covered her
+pale face with her trembling hands. She was discharged "owing to certain
+necessary changes to be made in the trimming department." She went and
+stood by the window with her back to the two girls. She understood the
+matter perfectly, and she did not dare trust herself to speak. It could
+not be helped, she thought, and why let Ettie know that she had brought
+this disaster upon her friend, also. Francis was trying to think. She
+was raging within herself. Then it came to her that she had boldly
+asserted that she would help protect and support Ettie. Now she was
+penniless, helpless, and homeless herself. There were but two faces that
+stood out before her as the faces of those to whom she could go for help
+and counsel, and she was afraid to go to even these. She was ashamed,
+humiliated, uncertain.
+
+She supposed that Gertrude Foster could help her if she would. She had
+that vague miscomprehension of facts which makes the less fortunate look
+upon the daughters of wealth and luxury and love as possessed of a magic
+wand which they need but stretch forth to compass any end. She did not
+dream that at that very moment Gertrude Foster was revolving exactly the
+same problem in her own mind, and reaching out vainly for a solution.
+"What shall I do? what ought I to do? what can I do?" were questions
+as real and immediate to Gertrude, in the new phase of life and thought
+which had come to her, as they were to Francis in her extremity. It is
+true that the greater part of the problem in Francis's mind dealt with
+the physical needs of herself and her little friend, and with her own
+proud and fierce anger toward her father and the cashier. It is also
+true that these features touched Gertrude but lightly; but the highest
+ideals, beliefs, aspirations, and love of her soul were in conflict
+within her, and the basis of the conflict was the same with both girls.
+Each had, in following the best that was within herself, come into
+violent contact with established prejudice and prerogative, and each
+was beating her wings, the one against the bars of a gilded cage draped
+lovingly in silken threads, and the other was feeling her helplessness
+where iron and wrath unite to hold their prey.
+
+The other face that arose before Francis brought the blood back to her
+face. She had not seen him since she had kissed his hand that night, and
+she wondered what he thought of her. She felt ashamed to go to him for
+help. She had talked so confidently to him that night of her own powers,
+and of her determination that Ettie should not again live under the same
+roof, and be subject to the will of the father whom she insisted was
+a disgrace to the child. "I reckon _he_ could get me another place to
+work--in a store," she thought. "But--" She shook her head, and a fierce
+light came into her eyes. She had learned enough to know that a girl who
+had left home under the wrath of her father, would best not appeal for
+a situation under the protection and recommendation of a young gentleman
+not of her own caste or condition in life. She thought of all this and
+of what it implied, and it seemed to her that her heart would burst with
+shame and rage.
+
+Was she not a human being? Were there not more reasons than one why
+another human unit should be kind to her and help her? If she were a boy
+all this shame would be lifted from her shoulders, all these suspicions
+and repression and artificial barriers would be gone. She wondered
+if she could not get a suit of men's clothes, and so solve the whole
+trouble. No one would then question her own right of individual and
+independent action or thought. No one would then think it commendable
+for her to be a useless atom, subordinating her whole individuality to
+one man, to whose mental and moral tone she must bend her own, until
+such time as he should turn her over to some other human entity,
+whereupon she would be required to readjust all her mental and moral
+belongings to accommodate the new master. How comfortable it would be,
+she thought, to go right on year after year, growing into and out of
+herself. Expanding her own nature, and finding the woman of to-morrow
+the outcome of the girl of yesterday. She had once heard a teacher
+explain about the chameleon with its capacity to adjust itself to and
+take on the color of other objects. It floated into her mind that
+girls were expected to be like chameleons. Instead of being John King's
+daughter, with, of course, John King's ideas, status and aspirations, or
+William Jones's wife--now metamorphosed into a tepid reflex of William
+Jones himself--she thought how pleasant it would be to continue to be
+Francis King, and not feel afraid to say so. The idea fascinated her.
+Yes, she would get a suit of men's clothes, and henceforth have and feel
+the dignity of individual responsibility and development. She slipped
+out of the room and into the street. She thought she would order the
+clothes as if "for a brother just my size." She could pay for a cheap
+suit. She paused in front of a shop window, and the sight of her own
+face in a glass startled her. She groaned aloud. She knew as she looked
+that she was too handsome to pass for a man. It was a woman's face.
+Then, too, how could she live with and care for Ettie? "No, _I'll_
+have to go to _them_ for help," she said, desperately to herself, and
+turning, faced Selden Avery coming across the street. The color flew
+into her face, but she saw at a glance that he did not think of their
+last meeting--or, at least, not of its ending. "I was just wishing I
+could see you and Miss Gertrude," she said, bluntly, her courage coming
+back when he paused, recognizing that she wished to speak further with
+him than a mere greeting.
+
+"Were you?" he said, smiling. "Our thoughts were half-way the same then,
+for I was wishing to see her, too."
+
+She thought how pleasant and soft his voice was, and she tried to modify
+the tones of her own.
+
+"I was goin't' ask you--her--what to do about--about something," she
+said, falteringly.
+
+"So was I," he smiled back, showing his perfect teeth. "She will have to
+be very, very wise to advise us both, will she not? Shall we go to her
+now? And together? Perhaps our united wisdom may solve both your problem
+and mine. Three people ought to be three times as wise as one, oughtn't
+they?"
+
+
+
+
+XIII.
+
+"When Gertrude came forward to meet Selden Avery and Francis King, she
+felt the disapproving eyes of her father fixed upon her. It was a new
+and a painful sensation. It made her greeting less free and frank than
+usual, and both Avery and Francis felt without being able to analyze it.
+
+"She don't like me to be with him," thought Francis, and felt humiliated
+and hurt.
+
+"Surely Gertrude cannot doubt me," was Avery's mental comment, and a
+sore spot in his heart, left by a comment made at the club touching
+Gertrude's friendship for this same tall, fiery girl at his side, made
+itself felt again. John Martin exchanged glances with Gertrude's father.
+Avery saw, and seeing, resented what he believed to be its meaning.
+
+The three men bowed rather stiffly to each other. Francis felt that she
+was, somehow, to blame. She wished that she had not come. She longed
+to go, but did not know what to say nor how to start. The situation was
+awkward for all. Gertrude wished for and yet dreaded the entrance of her
+mother.
+
+Avery felt ashamed to explain, but he began as if speaking to Gertrude
+and ended with a look of challenge at the two men facing him. "I chanced
+to meet Miss King in the street and as both of us stood in need of
+advice from you," he was trying to smile unconcernedly, "we came up the
+avenue together."
+
+There was a distinct look of displeasure and disapproval upon Mr.
+Foster's face, while John Martin took scant pains to conceal his
+disgust. He, also, had heard, and repeated, the club gossip to
+Gertrude's father.
+
+"If good advice is what you want particularly," said Mr. Foster, slowly,
+"I don't know but that I might accommodate you. I hardly think Gertrude
+is in a position to--to--"
+
+The bell rang sharply and in an instant the little cash girl from the
+store rushed in gasping for breath.
+
+"Come quick! quick! Ettie is killed! She fell down stairs and then--oh,
+something _awful_ happened! I don't know what it was. The doctor is
+there. He sent me here, 'cause Ettie cried and called for you!" She was
+looking at Gertrude, who started toward the door.
+
+"Go back and tell the doctor that Miss Foster cannot come," said her
+father, rising.
+
+"Certainly not, I should hope," remarked John Martin under his breath;
+"the most preposterous idea!" Gertrude paused. She was looking at her
+father with appeal in her face. Then her eyes fell upon the tense lips
+and piercing gaze of Francis King who, half way to the street door, had
+turned and was looking first from one to the other.
+
+"Papa," said Gertrude, "don't say that. I must go. It is right that I
+should, and I must." Then with outstretched hands, "I want to go, papa!
+I need to. Don't--"
+
+"You will do nothing of the kind, Gertrude. It is outrageous. What
+business have you got with that kind of girls? I _asked_ you to stop
+having them come here, and I told you to let them alone. I am perfectly
+disgusted with Avery, here, for--" He had thought Francis was gone. The
+drapery where she had turned to hear what Gertrude would say hid her
+from him. "_With that kind of girls!_" was ringing in her ears. "I hope
+when you are married _that_ is not the sort of society he is going to
+surround you with. It--" Avery saw for the first time what the trouble
+was. He stepped quickly to Gertrude's side and slipped one arm about
+her. Then he took the hand she still held toward her father.
+
+"My wife shall have her own choice. She is as capable as I to choose.
+I shall not interfere. She shall not find me a master, but a comrade.
+Gertrude is her own judge and my adviser. That is all I ask, and it is
+all I assume for myself as her husband--when that time comes," he added,
+with her hand to his lips.
+
+Mrs. Foster entered attired for the street. The unhappy face of Francis
+King with wide eyes staring at Gertrude met her gaze. She had heard what
+went before. "Get your hat, Gertrude," she said. "I will go with you. It
+might take too long to get a carriage. Francis, come with me; Gertrude
+will follow us. Come with her, my son," she said, to Selden Avery, and
+a spasm of happiness swept over his face. She had never called him that
+before. He stooped and kissed her, and there were tears in the young
+man's eyes as Mrs. Foster led Francis King away.
+
+"I suppose it was all my fault to begin with," said John Martin, when
+the door had closed behind them. "It all started from that visit to the
+Spillinis. The only way to keep the girls of this age in--" he was going
+to say "in their place," but he changed to 'where they belong,' "is not
+to let them find out the facts of life. Charity and religion did well
+enough to appease the consciences of women before they had colleges, and
+all that. I didn't tell you so at the time, but I always did think it
+was a mistake to send Gertrude to a college where she could measure her
+wits with men. She'll never give it up. She don't know where to stop."
+
+Mr. Foster lighted a cigar--a thing he seldom did in the drawing-room.
+He handed one to John Martin.
+
+"I guess you're right, John," he said, slowly. "She can't seem to see
+that graduation day ended all that. It was Katherine's idea, sending her
+there, though. I wanted her to go to Vassar or some girl's school like
+that. I don't know what to make of Katherine lately; when I come to
+think of it, I don't know what to make of her all along. She seems to
+have laid this plan from the first, college and all; but I never saw
+it. Sometimes I'm afraid--sometimes I almost think--" He tapped his
+forehead and shook his head, and John Martin nodded contemplatively, and
+said: "I shouldn't wonder if you are right, Fred. Too much study is a
+dangerous thing for women. The structure of their brains won't stand
+it. It is sad, very sad;" and they smoked in sympathetic silence, while
+James had hastened below stairs to assure Susan that he thought he'd
+catch himself allowing his sweetheart or wife to demean herself and
+disgrace him by having anything to do with a person in the position of
+Ettie Berton. And Susan had little doubt that James was quite right,
+albeit Susan felt moderately sure that in a contest of wits--after the
+happy day--she could be depended upon to get her own way by hook or by
+crook, and Susan had no vast fund of scruple to allay as to method or
+motive. Deception was not wholly out of Susan's line. Its necessity did
+not disturb her slumbers.
+
+
+
+
+XIV.
+
+Some one had sent for Ettie's father. They told him that she was
+dying, and he had come at once. Mr. King had gone with him. The latter
+gentleman did not much approve of his colleague's soft-heartedness in
+going. He did not know where his own daughter was, and he did not care.
+She had faced him in her fiery way, and angered him beyond endurance the
+morning after she had learned of the awful bill which he had not really
+originated, but which he had induced Mr. Berton to present, at the
+earnest behest of a social lion whose wont it was to roar mightily in
+the interest of virtue, but who was at the present moment engaged in
+lobbying vigorously in the interest of vice.
+
+When Francis entered the sick-room with Mrs. Foster, and found the two
+men there, she gave one glance at the pallid, unconscious figure on the
+bed, and then demanded, fiercely: "Where is the cashier? Why didn't you
+bring him and--and the rest of you who help make laws to keep him where
+he is, an'--an' to put Ettie where she is? Why didn't y' bring _all_ of
+your kind that helped along the job?"
+
+Mrs. Foster had been bending over the child on the bed. She turned.
+
+"Don't, Francis," she said, trying to draw the girl away. She was
+standing before the two men, who were near the window. "Don't, Francis.
+That can do no good. They did not intend--" "No'm," began Berton,
+awkwardly; "no'm, I didn't once think o' _my_ girl, n--" He glanced
+uneasily at his colleague and then at the face on the bed.
+
+"Or you would never have wanted such a law passed, I am sure," said
+Katherine.
+
+"No'm, I wouldn't," he said, doggedly, not looking at his colleague.
+
+"Don't tell me!" exclaimed Francis. "You don't none of you care for her.
+He only cares because it is his girl an' disgraces _him_. What did he
+do? Care for her? No, he drove her off. That shows who he's a-carin'
+for. He ain't sorry because it hurts or murders her. He never tried to
+make it easy for her an' say he was a lot more to blame an'--an'--a
+big sight worse every way than she was. He's a-howling now about bein'
+sorry; but he's only sorry for himself. He'd a let her starve--an' so'd
+_he_," she said, pointing to her father. She was trembling with rage
+and excitement. "I hope there is a hell! I jest hope there is! I'll be
+willin' to go to it myself jest t' see--"
+
+The door opened softly and Gertrude entered, and behind her stood Selden
+Avery.
+
+"That kind of girls" floated anew into Francis's brain, and the sting of
+the words she had heard Gertrude's father utter drove her on. "I wish
+to God, every man that ever lived could be torn to pieces an'--an' put
+under Ettie's feet. They wouldn't be fit for her to walk on--none of
+'em! She never did no harm on purpose ner when she understood; an'
+men--men jest love to be mean!"
+
+She felt the utter inadequacy of her words, and a great wave of feeling
+and a sense of baffled resentment swept over her, and she burst into
+tears. Gertrude tried to draw her out of the room. At the door she
+sobbed: "Even _her_ father's jest like the rest, only--only he says it
+easier. He--"
+
+"Francis, Francis," said Gertrude, almost sternly, when they were
+outside the sickroom. "You must not act so. It does no good, and--and
+you are partly wrong, besides. If--"
+
+"I didn't mean _him_," said the girl, with her handkerchief to her eyes.
+"I didn't mean _him._ I know what he thinks about it. I heard him talk
+one night at the club. He talked square, an' I reckon he is square. But
+_I_ wouldn't take no chances. I wouldn't marry the Angel Gabriel an'
+give him a chance to lord it over me!"
+
+Gertrude smiled in spite of herself, and glanced within through the open
+door. There was a movement towards where the sick girl lay. "If you go
+in, you must be quiet," she said to Francis, and entered. Ettie had been
+stirring uneasily. She opened her great blue eyes, and when she saw the
+faces about her, began to sob aloud.
+
+"Don't let pa scold me. I'll do his way. I'll do--anything anybody
+wants. I like to. The store--" She gave a great shriek of agony. She
+had tried to move and fell back in a convulsion. She was only partly
+conscious of her suffering, but the sight was terrible enough to
+sympathetic hearts, and there was but one pair of dry eyes in the room.
+The same beady, stern, hard glitter held its place in the eyes of Mr.
+King.
+
+"Serves her right," he was thinking. "And a mighty good lesson. Bringin'
+disgrace on a good man's name!"
+
+The tenacity with which Mr. King adhered to the belief in, and
+solicitude for, a good name, would have been touching had it not been
+noticeable to the least observant that his theory was, that the custody
+of that desirable belonging was vested entirely in the female members
+of a family. Nothing short of the most austere morals could preserve the
+family 'scutcheon if he was contemplating one side. Nothing short of a
+long-continued, open, varied, and obtrusive dishonesty and profligacy of
+a male member could even dull its lustre. It was a comfortable code for
+a part of its adherents.
+
+Had his poor, colorless, inane wife ever dared to deviate from the
+beaten path of social observance, Mr. King would have talked about and
+felt that "his honor" was tarnished. Were he to follow far less strictly
+the code, he would not only be sure that his own honor was intact,
+but if any one were to suggest to him the contrary, or that he was
+compromising her honor, he would have looked upon that person as lacking
+in what he was pleased to call "common horse-sense." He was in no manner
+a hypocrite. His sincerity was undoubted. He followed the beaten track.
+Was it not the masculine reason and logic of the ages, and was not
+that final? Was not all other reason and logic merely a spurious
+emotionalism? morbid? unwholesome? irrational?
+
+No one would gainsay that unless it were a lunatic or a woman, which
+was much the same thing--and since the opinion of neither of these was
+valuable, why discuss or waste time with them? That was Mr. King's point
+of view, and he was of the opinion that he had a pretty good voting
+majority with him, and a voting majority was the measure of value and
+ethics with Representative King--when the voting majority was on his
+side.
+
+When the last awful agony came to poor little Ettie Berton, and she
+yielded up, in pathetic terror and reluctant despair, the life which
+had been moulded for her with such a result almost as inevitable as the
+death itself, a wave of tenderness and remorse swept over her father. He
+buried his face in the pillow beside the poor, pretty, weak, white face
+that would win favor and praise by its cheerful ready acquiescence no
+more, and wept aloud. This impressed Representative King as reasonable
+enough, under all the circumstances, but when Ettie's father intimated
+later to Francis that he had been to blame, and that, perhaps, after
+all, Ettie _was_ only the legitimate result of her training and the
+social and legal conditions which he had helped to make and sustain,
+Representative King curled his lip scornfully and remarked that in his
+opinion Tom Berton never could be relied on to be anything but a damned
+fool? In the long run. He was a splendid "starter." Always opened up
+well in any line; but unless someone else held the reins after that the
+devil would be to pay and no mistake.
+
+Francis heard; and, hearing, shut tight her lips and with her
+tear-swollen eyes upon the face of her dead friend, swore anew that to
+be disgraced by the presence of a father like that was more than she
+could bear. She could work or she could die; but there was nothing on
+this earth, she felt, that would be so impossible, so disgraceful, as
+for her to ever again acknowledge his authority as her guide.
+
+"Come home with me to-night, Francis," said Mrs. Foster. "We will think
+of a plan--"
+
+"I'm goin' to stay right here," said the girl, with a sob and a shiver;
+for she had all the horror and fear of the dead that is common to her
+type and her inexperience. "I'm goin' to stay right here. I can't go
+home, an' I'm discharged at the store. Ettie told me her rent was paid
+for this month. I'll take her place here an'--an' try to find another
+place to work."
+
+Mrs. Foster realized that to stay in that room would fill the girl with
+terror, but she felt, too, that she understood why Francis would not
+go home with her. "That kind of girls" from Mr. Foster's lips had stung
+this fierce, sensitive creature to the quick. A week ago she would
+have been glad indeed to accept Katherine Foster's offer. Now she would
+prefer even this chamber of death, where the odors made her ill, and
+the thoughts and imaginings would insure to her sleepless nights of
+unreasoning fear. Her father did not ask her to go home. Representative
+King believed in representing. Was not his family a unit? And was he not
+the figure which stood for it? It had never been his custom to ask
+the members of his household to do things. He told them that he wanted
+certain lines of action fallowed. That was enough. The thought and the
+will of that ideal unit, "the family," vested in the person of Mr. King
+and he proposed to represent it in all things.
+
+If by any perverse and unaccountable mental process there was developed
+a personality other than and different from his own, Representative King
+did not propose to be disturbed in his home-life--as he persisted in
+calling the portion of his existence where he was able to hold the
+iron hand of power ever upon the throat of submission--to the extent of
+having such unseemly personality near him.
+
+In her present mood he did not want Francis at home. Representative King
+was a staunch advocate of harmony and unity in the family life. He was
+of opinion that where timidity and dependence say "yes" to all that
+power suggests, that there dwelt unity and harmony. That is to say, he
+held to this idea where it touched the sexes and their relation to
+each other in what he designated an ideal domestic life. In all other
+relations he held far otherwise--unless he chanced to be on the side
+of power and had a fair voting majority. Representative King was an
+enthusiastic admirer of submission--for other people. He thought that
+there was nothing like self-denial to develop the character and beauty
+of a nature. It is true that his scorn was deep when he contemplated the
+fact that John Berton "had no head of his own," but then, John Berton
+was a man, and a man ought to have some self-respect. He ought to
+develop his powers and come to something definite. A definite woman
+was a horror. Her attractiveness depended upon her vagueness, so
+Representative King thought; and if a large voting majority was not with
+him in open expression, he felt reasonably sure that he could depend
+upon them in secret session, so to speak. Representative King was not
+a linguist, but he could read between the social and legal lines very
+cleverly indeed, and finer lines of thought than these were not for
+Representative King.
+
+And so he did not ask Francis to go home. "When she gets ready to go my
+way and says so, she can come," he thought.
+
+"When that dress gets shabby and she's a little hungry, she'll conclude
+that my way is good enough for her." He smiled at the vision of the
+future "unity and harmony" which should thus be ushered into his home by
+means of a little judiciously applied discipline, and Francis took her
+dead friend's place as a lodger and tried to think, between her spasms
+of loneliness and fears, what she should do on the morrow.
+
+
+
+
+XV.
+
+"Francis told me once at the Guild that she can make delicious bread and
+pastry," said Gertrude, as they drove home. "I wonder if we could not
+start her in a little shop of her own. She has the energy and vim to
+build herself a business. I doubt if she will every marry--with her
+experience one can hardly wonder--and there is a long life before her.
+Her salvation will be work; a career, success."
+
+"A career in a pastry shop seems droll enough," smiled her mother,
+"but--"
+
+"I think I might influence the club to take a good deal of her stuff.
+We've a miserable pastry cook now," said Avery. "That would help her
+to get a start, and the start is always the hard part, I suppose, in a
+thing like that."
+
+"That would be a splendid chance. If the members liked her things,
+perhaps they would get their wives to patronize her, too," said
+Gertrude, gaily. "I'm so glad you thought of that, but then you always
+think of the right thing," she added, tenderly. They all three laughed a
+little, and Avery slipped his arm about her.
+
+"Do I?" he asked in a voice tremulous with happiness. "Do I, Darling?
+I'm so glad you said that, for I've just been thinking that--that I
+don't want to go back to Albany without you, and--and the new session
+begins in ten weeks. Darling, will you go with me? May she, my mother?"
+he asked, catching Mrs. Foster's hand in his own. The two young people
+were facing her. She sat alone on the back seat of the closed carriage.
+The street lights were beginning to blossom and flicker. The rays fell
+upon the mother's face as they drove. Her eyes were closed, and tears
+were on her cheeks.
+
+"Forgive me, mother," said Avery, tenderly. "Forgive me! You have gone
+through so much to-day. I should have waited; but--but I love her so. I
+need her so--I need her to help me think right. Can you understand?"
+
+Mrs. Foster moved to one side and held out both arms to her daughter.
+
+"Sit by me," she said, huskily, and Gertrude gathered her in her young,
+strong arms.
+
+"Can I understand?" half sobbed Katherine from her daughter's shoulder.
+"Can I understand? Oh, I do! I do! and I am so happy for you both; but
+she--she is _my_ daughter, and it is so hard to let her go--even to you!
+It is so hard!"
+
+Gertrude could not speak. She tried to look at her lover, but tears
+filled her eyes. She was holding her mother's hand to her lips.
+
+"Dear little mamma," she whispered; "dear little mamma, I shall never go
+if it makes you unhappy--never, if it breaks my heart. But mamma, I love
+you more because I love him; and--"
+
+"I know, I know," said Katherine, trying to struggle out of her
+heartache which held back and beyond itself a tender joy for these two.
+"But love is so selfish. I _am_ glad. I am glad for you both--but--oh,
+my daughter, I love you, _I_ love you!" she said, and choked down a sob
+to smile in the girl's eyes.
+
+Mr. Foster was waiting for them in the library. They were late. He had
+been thinking.
+
+"Well, I'm tremendously glad you're back," he said brightly, kissing
+his wife, and then he took Gertrude in his arms. "Sweetheart," he said,
+smiling down into her eyes, "if I seemed harsh to-day, I'm sorry. I only
+did it because I thought it was for your own good. You know that."
+
+"Why, papa," she said, with her cheek against his own; "of course I
+know. Of course I understand. We all did. You don't mind if we did not
+see your way? You--"
+
+"The girl is dead, dear," said Mrs. Foster, touching her husband's arm,
+"and--let us not talk of that now, to--to these, our children. They want
+your--they want to ask--they are going to be married in ten weeks?"
+
+"The dickens!" exclaimed her father, and held Gertrude at arm's length.
+"Is that so, Sweetheart?" There was a twinkle in his eyes, and he lifted
+her chin with one finger and then kissed her. "The dickens! Well, all
+I've got to say is, I'm sorry for old Martin and the rest of us," and
+he grasped Selden Avery's hand. "I hope you'll give up that legislative
+foolishness pretty soon and come back to town and live with civilized
+people in a civilized way. It'll be horribly lonely in New York without
+Gertrude, but--oh, well, its nature's way. We're all a lot of robbers.
+I stole this little woman away from her father, and I'm an unrepentent
+thief yet, am I not?" and he kissed his wife with the air of a man who
+feels that life is well worth living, no matter what its penalties, so
+long as she might be not the least of them.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Pray You, Sir, Whose Daughter?, by
+Helen H. Gardener
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