"It doesn't really matter much what I say," thought Joan, listening to herself; "it's how I say it. If I drop my voice a note here, they ought to frown." (They did.) "Now I'll have them smile a little, perhaps chuckle. After I stop, no applause, I think—just a nice, thoughtful silence." (All of which came faithfully to pass.)
When she stepped down from that platform, her reputation as a public speaker was made. Thereafter she delivered speeches whenever and wherever she was asked, to the incredulous delight of Archie.
"Say, come over and hear the wife do her little spiel to-night!" he would urge upon all his acquaintance. "It's a treat!—stands right up and hands it to 'em hot off the reel, without a note or anything. You can see her little old brain workin' while she talks—and lookin' pretty as a picture all the time!"
His pride in her was such that he presented her with a successor to Lizzie, a more pretentious member of the Lizzie family, in fact, in which to get about to her numerous committee meetings.
"Of course we can afford it," he said in answer to her demur. "Haven't all your friends got automobiles? Well, then!"
Joan accomplished much in the way of by-product to this satisfaction of her vanity. Her youthful charm and her good breeding got her a hearing frequently where more strenuous representatives of the cause had failed; and through her many hitherto uncertain lambs were gathered safely into the fold. On one occasion, to her astonishment, Joan discovered the three Misses Darcy in her audience, wearing expressions of shrinking alarm. But if they had come—not to scoff, they were too polite for that: let us say to deprecate,—they remained to join.
"I declare it's shameful the way we women have been treated all this time!" cried Miss Iphigenia afterwards, truculently signing the card which made of her a suffragette. "I'd no idea! Not allowed a word in edgewise, the gentlemen spending all the money and making all the laws, ordering us about like we were so many white slaves—"
"I don't recall that darling mama was ever treated in just that way by dear papa?" interjected Miss Virginia, uncertainly.
"Pooh! Exceptions," snorted Miss Iphigenia (if one so gentle could be said to snort). "Exceptions can be made to prove anything, can't they, Joan? Why, we haven't even had a say-so as to whether we should marry or not. Simply had to sit back and say 'Thank you, sir!' to any gentleman who was kind enough to ask us!"
Here Miss Virginia was able thoroughly to concur. "And if nobody was kind enough to ask us—Oh, my dears, I begin to think that if we could have had the ballot in time—!"