"Good Lord, Mabel, you are crazy! Don't you know you are helping that gang to drive me into bankruptcy!"
Mrs. Acres was the living feminine likeness of Pin Money. She was very small, very fair, with faded blue eyes. Her clothes were always too tight, and she wore narrow ruffles like the hope, the mere hope, of feathers and wings to come.
She looked up now into her husband's face with a curious little white smile.
"I know that I am all that stands between you and ruin, Martin. I've been waiting to talk to you, to give you a hint, but our affairs are not entirely in shape. We are not ready to show our hand."
"To show her hand! And this from my own wife!" groaned Acres, beginning to stride up and down the room.
"Listen, dear," said Mabel, rising and following him. "I ought not to do it, but I will give you just one little hint."
"All right, hint!" he sneered.
"Call on Judge Regis to-morrow, and tell him you are very much interested in suffrage for women in this county. Say that you'd like to take your part in bringing it about. Just that, no more. And you'll see what happens." She turned her head to one side and looked at him with treacherous sweetness.
"I'll be hanged if I do!"
"Be reasonable, Martin!"