"Because," replied Mrs. Stout, "they wouldn't have talked about everything under the sun while they was doin' it."
"No, my dear Mrs. Stout" (Mrs. Tweedie knew the irony of "my dear" perfectly), "it would be because the other sex are more experienced than woman. And they are more experienced because for centuries it has been their exclusive right to organize and govern. In the meantime, we women have been kept under foot and in darkness."
"Good land!" exclaimed Mrs. Stout, "perhaps you have been stepped on, Mis' Tweedie, but I'm mighty sure that I ain't! It would take an awful big foot to keep me in darkness." An embarrassing silence followed, after which Mrs. Tweedie put the question, on motion of Miss Sawyer, and the name, "The Morning Glory Club," was adopted unanimously. At the moment Mrs. Tweedie announced, "It is a vote," Ezra Tweedie, unmistakably labouring under some great excitement, appeared in the doorway.
"What is it?" asked Mrs. Tweedie.
"Mrs. Brown, next door, needs you at once," he stammered.
"Oh!" exclaimed the ladies in a stage whisper. Mrs. Tweedie alone seemed not to understand.
"What has happened?" she demanded, forgetting for the moment those present. Ezra blushed, and looked about for some means of escape. (What foolishly sensitive, over modest fools we all are at times.) "Why don't you answer?" Mrs. Tweedie almost thundered.
"It's a new baby!" Ezra blurted, and then fled.
The Morning Glory Club adjourned without form.
Late that afternoon when Mrs. Tweedie returned home she found Ezra asleep on a couch in the sitting-room, while in the kitchen her son, Thomas, and two of his chums, were trying to tar and feather a fourth urchin with molasses and the contents of a pillow. The uplifting of our morals and intellect is trying, and some personal sacrifice is necessary, she thought, as she drove the boys out of the house, and awoke her sleeping husband.