The Sturdy Oak Part 12

Genevieve had always loved children deeply. Long before this her happy dreams had peopled the old house in Sheridan Road with handsome, dark-eyed girls, and bright-eyed boys like their father.

But, to her own intense astonishment, she found this speech from her husband distasteful. George would be "proud," and Uncle Martin pleased.

But it suddenly occurred to Genevieve that neither George nor Uncle Martin would be tearful and nervous. Neither George nor Uncle Martin need eschew golf and riding and dancing. To be sick, when she had always been so well! To face death, for which she had always had so healthy a horror! Cousin Alex had died when her baby came, and Lois Farwell had never been well after the fourth Farwell baby made his appearance.

Genevieve's tears died as if from flame. She gently put aside the sustaining arm, and went to the little mirror on the wall, to straighten her hat. She remembered buying this hat, a few weeks ago, in the ecstatic last days of the old life.

"We needn't talk of that yet, George," she said quietly.

She could see George's grieved look, in the mirror. There was a short silence in the office.

Then Betty Sheridan, cool in pongee, came briskly in.

"h.e.l.lo, Jinny!" said she. "Had you forgotten our plan tonight?

You're chaperoning me, I hope you realize! I'm rather difficile, too.

Genevieve, Pudge is outside; he'll take you out and buy you something cold. I took him to lunch today. It was disgraceful! Except for a frightful-looking mess called German Pot Roast With Carrots and Noodles Sixty, he ate nothing but melon, lemon-meringue pie, and pineapple special. I was absolutely ashamed! George, I would have speech with you."

"Private business, Betty?" he asked pleasantly. "My wife may not have the vote, but I trust her with all my affairs!"

"Indeed, I'm not in the least interested!" Genevieve said saucily.

She knew George was pleased with her as she went happily away.

"It's just as well Jinny went," said Betty, when she and the district-attorney-elect were alone. "Because it's that old bore Colonel Jaynes! He's come again, and he says he _will_ see you!"

Deep red rose in George's handsome face.

"He came here last week, and he came yesterday," Betty said, sitting down, "and really I think you should see him! You see, George, in that far-famed article of yours, you remarked that 'a veteran of the civil as well as the Spanish war' had told you that it was the restless outbreaking of a few northern women that helped to precipitate the national catastrophe, and he wants to know if you meant him!"

"I named no names!" George said, with dignity, yet uneasily, too.

"I know you didn't. But you see we haven't many veterans of _both_ wars," Betty went on, pleasantly. "And of course old Mrs. Jaynes is a rabid suffragist, and she is simply hopping. He's a mild old man, you know, and evidently he wants to square things with 'Mother.' Now, George, who _did_ you mean?"

"A statement like that may be made in a general sense," George remarked, after scowling thought.

"You might have made the statement on your own hook," Betty conceded, "but when you mention an anonymous Colonel, of course they all sit up!

He says that he's going to get a signed statement from you that _he_ never said that, and publish it!"

"Ridiculous!" said George.

"Then here are two letters," Betty pursued. "One is from the corresponding secretary of the Women's Non-partisan Pacific Coast a.s.sociation. She says that they would be glad to hear from you regarding your statement that equal suffrage, in the western states, is an acknowledged failure."

"She'll wait!" George predicted grimly.

"Yes, I suppose so. But she's written to our Mrs. Herrington here, asking her to follow up the matter. George, dear," asked Betty maternally, "_why_ did you do it? Why couldn't you let well enough alone!"

"What's your other letter?" asked George.

"It's just from Mr. Riker, of the _Sentinel_, George. He wants you to drop in. It seems that they want a correction on one of your statistics about the number of workingwomen in the United States who don't want the vote. He says it only wants a signed line from you that you were mistaken--"

Refusing to see Colonel Jaynes, or to answer the Colonel's letter, George curtly telephoned the editor of the _Sentinel_, and walked home at four o'clock, his cheeks still burning, his mind in a whirl. Big issues should have been absorbing him: and his mind was pestered instead with these midges of the despised cause. Well, it was all in the day's work--

And here was his sweet, devoted wife, fluttering across the hall, as cool as a rose, in her pink and white. And she had packed his things, in case they wanted to spend the night at Sea Light, and the "cats" had gone off for library books, and he must have some ginger-ale, before it was time to go for Betty and Penny.

The day was perfection. The motor-car purred like a racing tiger under George's gloved hand. Betty and Penny were waiting, and the three young persons forgot all differences, and laughed and chatted in the old happy way, as they prepared for the start. But Betty was carrying a book: _Catherine of Russia_.

"Do you know why suffragists should make an especial study of queens, George?" she asked, as she and Penny settled themselves on the back seat.

"Well, I'll be interlocutor," George smiled, glancing up at the house, from which his wife might issue at any moment. "Why should suffragists read the lives of queens, Miss Bones?"

"Because queens are absolutely the only women in all history who had equal rights!" Betty answered impa.s.sively. "Do you realize that? The only women whose moral and social and political instincts had full sway!"

"And a sweet use they made of them, sometimes!" said George.

"And who were the great rulers," pursued Betty. "Whose name in English history is like the names of Elizabeth and Victoria, or Matilda or Mary, for the matter of that? Who mended and conserved and built up what the kings tore down and wasted? Who made Russia an intellectual power--"

Again Penny had an odd sense of fear. Were women perhaps superior to men, after all!

"I don't think Catherine of Russia is a woman to whom a lady can point with pride," George said conclusively. Genevieve, who had appeared, shot Betty a triumphant glance as they started. Pudge waved to them from the candy store at the corner.

"There's a new candy store every week!" said Penny, shuddering. "Heaven help that poor boy; it must be in the blood!"

"Women must always have something sweet to nibble," George said, leaning back. "The United States took in two millions last year in gum alone!"

"Men chew gum!" suggested Betty.

"But come now, Betty, be fair!" George said. "Which s.e.x eats more candy?"

"Well, I suppose women do," she admitted.

"You count the candy stores, down Main Street," George went on, "and ask yourself how it is that these people can pay rents and salaries just on candy,--nothing else. Did you ever think of that?"

"Well, I could vote with a chocolate in my mouth!" Betty muttered mutinously, as the car turned into the afternoon peace of the main thoroughfare.

"You count them on your side, Penny, and I will on mine!" Genevieve suggested. "All down the street." "Well, wait--we've pa.s.sed two!" Penny said excitedly.

"Go on; there's three. That grocery store with candy in the window!"

"Groceries don't count!" objected Betty.

"Oh, they do, too! And drug stores.... Every place that sells candy!"

"Drug stores and groceries and fruit stores only count half a point,"

Betty stipulated. "Because they sell other things!"

"That's fair enough," George conceded here, with a nod.

Genevieve and Penny almost fell out of the car in their anxiety not to miss a point, and George quite deliberately lingered on the cross-streets, so that the d.a.m.ning total might be increased.