“Was Aunt Beulah there?”
“I said all your aunts. Beulah was there, like the famous Queenie, with her hair in a braid.”
“Not really.”
“Pretty nearly. She’s gone in for dress reform now, you know, a kind of middy blouse made out of a striped portière with a kilted skirt of the same 212 material and a Scotch cap. She doesn’t look so bad in it. Your Aunt Beulah presents a peculiar phenomenon these days. She’s growing better-looking and behaving worse every day of her life.”
“Behaving worse?”
“She’s theory ridden and fad bitten. She’ll come to a bad end if something doesn’t stop her.”
“Do you mean—stop her working for suffrage? I’m a suffragist, Uncle David.”
“And quite right to remind me of it before I began slamming the cause. No, I don’t mean suffrage. I believe in suffrage myself. I mean the way she’s going after it. There are healthy ways of insisting on your rights and unhealthy ways. Beulah’s getting further and further off key, that’s all. Here we are at home, daughter. Your poor old cooperative father welcomes you to the associated hearthstone.”
“This front entrance looks more like my front entrance than any other place does,” Eleanor said. “Oh! I’m so glad to be here. George, how is the baby?” she asked the black elevator man, who beamed delightedly upon her.
“Gosh! I didn’t know he had one,” David chuckled. “It takes a woman—” 213