MARGARET made the faintest little grimace of dismay at the long florist’s box for which she had just signed the receipt presented by the messenger. It wasn’t a grimace of displeasure but a puzzled look as if the particular calculation involved was an unresolved doubt. Then she cut the pale green string and lifted the flowers out.
There were flowers for every corner, fresia, daffodils, narcissus—everything that the florist’s windows were blooming with during this second week of May. She touched them with delight, sorted them, placed them in every bit of crockery she could find. But Mrs. Thorstad sat in a chair drawn up before the mission oak table in Margaret’s little rented apartment and waited. She was impatient that the flowers should have come at a moment when their discussion hinged on a crisis. And as if her respect for Margaret had fallen a little, she eyed the display without appreciation. Margaret talked, as she placed the flowers, however, as if she could separate her mental reactions from her esthetic.
“Well,” she said, “you saw the way the thing went. It was absolutely cut and dried. I knew there was no chance of getting a woman elected as one of the regular delegates to the National Convention. Pratt and Abbott were the slate from the beginning. Every one knew Gage Flandon wanted them and every one knew that meant they were Joyce’s choice if Flandon wanted them. I had talked to Mr. Flandon about it but he wouldn’t tell me anything really revealing. Except that the slate was made up and while they were very glad to have the women as voters that it might be better to wait another four years before they gave them a chance to sit in at a National Convention. He didn’t intend to have a woman and especially he didn’t intend to have one because he knew there was some agitation to send his own wife.”
“That was what the mistake was, I think, Miss Duffield. I think another candidate might have done better.”
“But they never even mentioned any woman,” exclaimed Margaret. Then as if she got the other woman’s meaning, she gave her a searching look.
Mrs. Thorstad talked blandly on. Margaret finished her work of beauty and came back to the table, tapping the surface of it with her regained pencil.
“What we must propose is a woman with a national ideal, a woman thoroughly interested in the district, conversant with its needs and with a democratic personality.”
Thus definitely did Mrs. Thorstad outline what she believed to be her virtues, but Margaret did not seem to understand them as solely hers.
“Helen Flandon combines all those things.”
“Personally,” broke in the other woman, “I have always admired Mrs. Flandon immensely. But I have always felt that her interest in all these matters was perhaps a little transitory. That is no reflection on her, of course” (Margaret nodded acquiescence) “but a woman with so many domestic duties and with so much society life must necessarily not be able to give her whole mind to the work.”