"It is just as well. She might have been tempted to say something. Some of these brilliantly bound volumes do have such fool things in them!"
CHAPTER XXXV
MRS. PENNYBACKER TALKS
In Senator Southard's committee-room Mrs. Pennybacker found herself surrounded with earnest women pleading for the weak and helpless of their own sex, and life seemed suddenly to have widened out into a great and noble thing. She drew long breaths as one does in stepping from the confined atmosphere of a close room into the pure free air of heaven. It was glorious to be alive and to have a part in a work like this. She thanked God that she would be permitted to add her mite to the efforts making up the sum total of this movement for the betterment of woman's estate. She saw her duty now and was ready to do it. If opportunity offered she would no longer shrink back from saying her word.
Opportunity did not offer until late in the interview,—after women's property rights and business rights had all been disposed of. She had said to Mrs. Greuze when that lady had urged her to take some part in the discussion, "I couldn't help you a particle until it comes to the item of joint guardianship. I don't know anything about those other questions. But I have some views on maternal rights, and maybe I could make them understood."
"That is exactly what we want you to talk about," said Mrs. Greuze. "These other women who have studied up the subject can attend to the first part of the bill, but when it comes to a mother's rights I know you could say something to the point and that it would be put in a telling way."
It is an insidious kind of flattery. Even Mrs. Pennybacker was not proof against it. As they made their way through the corridors leading from the Rotunda to the committee-room she was figuratively girding up her loins.
When the delegation filed into his committee-room Senator Southard felt glad that it was here he was to receive them. He was the kind of man that relies upon office furniture and green covered table for moral support in an encounter with the opposite sex. These things impress women (some women); and the flim-flameries of a drawing-room depress men (some men). The consciousness that they had invaded his territory put him at his ease. He listened attentively to the various arguments advanced, putting in a word here and there, bowing assent frequently, and nodding thoughtfully as a new train of thought was suggested. All seemed to be going so well that Mrs. Pennybacker began to feel that her word would be superfluous. But Mrs. Greuze who had had wider experience in these things observed that the Senator had never once committed himself. She even thought she could discover a little vein of combativeness in his attitude.
A Mrs. Allaine had just finished a forcible plea for the right of women to carry on business in their own names.
"Ladies," said the Senator, "I hope you will pardon me when I say that I seriously question the expediency of a woman's ever entering upon a business career."