Which, when Allingham opened and read it late that afternoon, caused him to give vent to a long, low whistle, and to read it over the second time.
But he wrote, immediately, accepting the appointment; and a dozen times that night he asked himself what she could want of him—and just how much he would be willing to help the woman-mayor.
Then, looking out across the moonlit city from his tower window, he recalled that other night when they rode together in the open country beneath the shining moon—when she was not the candidate, the mayor-elect, the modern strenuous woman—but just a sweet and gracious spirit with a melodious voice and a presence that thrilled him. Then he told himself, "Yes, anything—anything she wants."
And Gertrude, in the silence of her own room, was saying to herself, "Will he come, I wonder? Would I, if I were in his place? If I were a man who had been brought up to believe as he does about women; and then a modern suffragist who had won out over me, had sent for me,—to ask me to come and help—would I go? Oh, how do I know?"
CHAPTER XIII
An Important Appointment
When John Allingham arrived at City Hall Thursday morning he was first of all impressed with the changed interior of the place,—the absence of loafers, the clean corridors, the blossoming plants. Neither could he help seeing that in place of the old spirit of listlessness in the various departments, everyone seemed busy and interested. "If this is what women can do in politics," he began to say to himself,—but the idea of incongruity was so deeply fixed in his mind that he at once supplemented his unfinished sentence,—"but they have no business here, just the same. It is no place for women."
He displayed none of the sense of awkwardness he felt, however, when he entered the Mayor's office and bade her good-morning.