Juliette Caldwell's pretty mother considered that she'd had a musical training in her day. Hadn't she studied a whole year as a girl at the Conservatory of Music up in Cincinnati? She stopped Selina on the sidewalk to speak about a marked article in a paper sent to her. "It's really wonderful about that B-Sharp Club away out there in a little town in Dakota. I'm so tired when I'm through with the servants, or the no-servants, and the children and the house, I'd be grateful to any incentive which would send me to my piano again."
Cousin Anna Tomlinson came by the Wistars with a circular report of various kinds of Woman's organizations. "The Ladies' Tourist Clubs? Are they parties for travel, Selina? I do get so tired when I go on a trip with your Cousin Willoughby, who won't let me do a thing or see a thing my way."
Selina one day chanced to report these things to her Aunt Juanita and Mrs. Higginson.
"I've known it for some while," assented her aunt. "I've not waited and worked, and worked and waited twelve years for this moment, not to recognize it when it comes. The time is ripe." Aunt Juanita spoke solemnly and as if genuinely moved. "I knew that when Mrs. Higginson and I started upon this local agitation and movement."
"I've studied the situation nearly five years myself," from Mrs. Higginson. "Juanita is right, the time is ripe, and the moment is here!"
It was the crucial moment! Both ladies admitted it! Acknowledged they had foreseen it and made ready for it! And then turned their backs upon it!
Mrs. Bruce met her clerical force of two as they arrived at her door the next morning. It was near the end of May.
"Important as I deem the cause here at home," she told Selina and Maud, "and I hold nothing higher than the arousing of the individual woman, Mrs. Higginson and I are called to Chicago. There's a chance that the demand by women for representation on the commission of the projected world's fair in Chicago is to be turned down. Mrs. Higginson hopes to be appointed one of these women representatives if the demand is granted to use the opportunity to spread her ideas about women among women. I am interested on principle. We go to-day."
Here Mrs. Higginson arrived in her carriage to pick up Mrs. Bruce and her satchel. She got out and came in for a brief conference.
"We had hoped to call on the women here in our own town and induce them to meet and organize this week. We may have to be in Chicago ten days, which will bring it well into June. By that time the various commencements and such are all on, and after them the summer exodus will have begun and the moment will be past. It's most unfortunate."