When Gertrude read this she sat half-dazed for a moment, and then clapped her hands with gleeful surprise.
"What is it?" asked her cousin.
"The Atlas has come out for me. It endorses the Reform Club—and me. That's some of Bailey's work."
"Yes. I hope you appreciate what Bailey is doing for you," said Miss Craig. "He would make a good mayor, himself."
"There are a dozen men in Roma who would be good mayors," answered Gertrude, "if they would. But they will not. Hence—well, I'm going to a caucus tonight. Are you going with me?"
"Oh, no, I think not. I'll go when and where it is necessary to cast my vote for you, Gertie," said Miss Craig. "But for the rest—excuse me."
Mrs. Bateman and the Judge accompanied Miss Van Deusen, however, to the nearly empty room where the first primary was being held. It was in an outlying ward, and the few men who stood about were wonder-stricken at the presence of women,—although they had seen the sex out on election days in plenty.
"Now you are seeing just how politics in Roma has been managed for a decade past. Right there in that corner," said the Judge, "you find a door with a slit in it through which you deposit your ballot. No record is kept of your vote, and behind the door sit the leaders of the ring, already making up the returns, which show, without doubt, as this is a hostile ward, that your delegates were defeated by an overwhelming majority. Tomorrow the ring newspaper, which prints all the legal notices of the county and receives a generous income through the advertisement of corporations allied with the ring, and whose proprietor is promised a commissionership by the governor who is backing the ring, will notify its readers that the selfish office-seekers, who had contested in the primaries, have received a stinging rebuke at the hands of the voters, and their villainous attempts to destroy the party, which had so unselfishly devoted itself to the interests of the community, have fallen to the ground."
"And must this be allowed?" asked Mrs. Bateman.
"No," and the Judge's tones rang firmly. "We will call a mass-meeting in every district in the city, right away; we,—you, Miss Van Deusen, as well as I and the others,—must address the people, telling them what we mean to do, and how."