"My husband has just got to take the stump for you," said the fluffy woman. "I'll make him."
"Thank you, Bella," was Miss Van Deusen's reply. "I suppose I shall be emblazoned and lauded and berated in the newspapers, and shall come out at the end of the campaign with scarcely a rag of reputation left, whether I win or lose."
"You are going to win, Gertrude," said Mrs. Bateman calmly.
"Yes, I'm going to win," answered the younger woman. And as she sat with her handsome head thrown hack and her far-seeing gaze looking out and past the assembled women into the stormy future, not one of them doubted, at the moment, the truth of her confident prophecy.
CHAPTER II
A Perplexed Reformer
The chairman of the Roma Municipal League had just finished dictating his morning's letters and was leaning back in his half-turned swivel chair. At another desk his secretary worked perfunctorily, awaiting orders from his chief.
"Anything from Wilkins?" asked the latter.