"To get things done by 'influence' is to revert, it seems to me, to the methods of the harem," said Fred, earnestly. Frederica was never flippant on this vital topic of suffrage, unless she was angry. Her grandmother's retort supplied the anger:
"Woman's charm will always outweigh woman's ballot," said Mrs. Holmes, with smiling decision. (She, too, was getting hot inside.)
"The antis," Fred flung back, "think that all that is necessary is to 'sit on the stile, and continue to smile'!"
"What did you say?" said Mrs. Holmes, frowning. "Young people speak so indistinctly nowadays! We were taught proper enunciation when I was young."
"Woman," said Miss Mary, raising her voice, "is a princess, but her God-given rule lies in the gentle domain of the home."
"Gosh!" said Fred—and two of her auditors laughed explosively. But Frederica was red with wrath. "I've seen the 'princess' exercising her God-given rule in cleaning the floors of saloons on her hands and knees, because she had to support the children that her husband had foisted on her and then deserted. Do you think under such 'gentle circumstances' her charm would do as much for her as a vote?"
One does not know just how much of an explosion there would have been if the elder Miss Graham had not come to the rescue: "Ah, well, there are so many good reasons on both sides, that I'm glad I don't have to decide it!" Then she began to talk of old friends in Grafton; but, alas, as a subject Grafton, too, was somewhat dangerous; old Mr. So-and-so died two years ago; and Mrs. Black—did Mrs. Holmes remember Mrs. Black? "I am sorry to say she is very ill," Miss Mary said. The chatter of gossip was—as it so often is with age—a rehearsal of sickness and death. In the midst of it Mrs. Holmes clutched at a gold mesh-bag that was slipping from her steep lap, and tried to rise:
"I think I must go. (Oh, do pick up that bag, Freddy dear.) I am too tender-hearted," she confessed, "I can't bear to hear unpleasant things!"
"Well, let us talk of pleasant things," Miss Eliza said; but she looked at the frightened old face under the white veil;—"and 'the feet of the bearers' are coming nearer to her every day!" she thought.
Mrs. Holmes sat down again, reluctantly. Of course, from the Misses Graham's point of view, there could be nothing pleasanter for a grandmother to hear than plaudits of Miss Freddy's efficiency; so they went back again to that. Dear Arthur had told them how hard she had worked (again Freddy's eyes rolled toward dear Arthur); engaging tradesmen, and making the landlord do the necessary repairing.—"Oh, my dear," Miss Mary interrupted herself, "I meant to warn you that one of your workmen left a half-smoked cigarette here. I knew you would want to reprove him. Dear me! in these days, with all the new ideas, the working-people are very careless. But I feel so strongly our responsibility to them, that I always tell them of their mistakes."