Pray You, Sir, Whose Daughter?

by Helen H. Gardener

VII.

When Avery took his seat in the Assembly he learned that Ettie Berton's father had been true to his calling. He still might be described as a professional starter. Any bill which was in need of some one to either introduce or offer a speech in its favor, found in John Berton an ever-ready champion.

Not that he either understood or believed in all the bills he presented or advocated. Belief and understanding were not for sale; nor, indeed, were they always very much within his own grasp. He was in the Legislature to promote, or start, such measures as stood in need of his peculiar abilities. This was very soon understood, and many a bill which other men feared or hesitated to present found its way to him and through him to a reading. For a while Avery watched this process with amusement. He wrote to Gertrude, from time to time, some very humorous letters about it; but finally, one day a letter came which so bitterly denounced both King and Berton, that Gertrude wondered what could have wrought the sudden change.

"He has introduced a bill which is now before my committee," he wrote, "that passes all belief. It is infamous beyond words to express, and, to my dismay, it finds many advocates beside King and Berton. That a conscienceless embruted inmate of an opium dive in Mott Street might acknowledge to himself in the dark, and when he was alone, that he could advocate such a measure, seems to me possible; but men who are in one sense reputable, who—many of them—look upon themselves as respectable; men who are fathers of girls and brothers of women, could even consider such a bill, I would not have believed possible, and yet, I am ashamed to say that I learn now for the first time, that our state is not the only one where similar measures have not only found advocates, but where there were enough moral lepers with voting power to establish such legislation. It makes me heartsick and desperate. I am ashamed of the human race. I am doubly ashamed that it is to my sex such infamous laws are due.

"You were right, my dear Miss Gertrude; you were right. It is outrageous that we allow mere conscienceless politicians to legislate for respectable people, and yet my position here is neither pleasant, nor will it, I fear, be half so profitable as you hope—as I hoped, before I came and learned all I now know. But, believe me, I shall vote on every bill and make every speech, with your face before me, and as if I were making that particular law to apply particularly to you."

Gertrude smiled as she re-read that part of his letter.

She wondered what awful bill Ettie's father had presented. She had never before thought that a legislator might strive to enact worse laws than he already found in the statute books. She had thought most of the trouble was that they did not take the time and energy to repeal old, bad laws that had come to us from an ignorant or brutal past.

It struck her as a good idea, that a man should never vote on a measure that he did not feel he was making a rule of action to apply to the woman for whom he cared most; she knew now that she was that woman for Selden Avery. He had told her that the night he came to bring the news that he was elected. It had been told in a strangely simple way.

Her father and mother had laughingly congratulated him upon his election, and Mr. Poster had added, banteringly: "If one may congratulate a man upon taking a descent like that."

Gertrude had held one of her father's hands in her own, and tried by gentle pressure to check him. Her father laughed, and added: "The little woman here is trying to head me off. She appears to think—"