And so, without waiting for a come-back or any embarrassing questions, I hustled into a simple little grey satin Trotteur costume which is French for pony-clothes and left that homefull of heavy-weight traitors where a radical parrot yelled "Anarchy" from morning till night, and even the steam radiators had commenced to smell like dynimite. And having shut the door after me with quite some explosion myself, I had the limousine headed to the White Kittens Annual Ball Assn., which I was due at it on account of all the most prominent ladies in picture and theatrical circles being on the committee and I naturally being indespensible if only for the value of my name. So I started off but not before I noticed that the same plain-clothes John was again perched opposite my front door.
III
All the way to the Palatial Hotel which the meeting is always held in the grand ballroom of, I kept getting more and more worked up. Things had certainly gone too far when Bolshevism had spread from the parlor to the kitchen or visa-versa, I didn't know which, and my own Ma being undoubtedly watched by the more or less Secret Service, all because of her having taken a fancy to them whiskers of this Kiskoff cockoo, which is the only explanation I could make of it, and after being a widow twenty years she aught to of been ashamed of herself. Still, it was a better explanation for her to of lost her head than her patriotism, and I tried to think this the case. And my own position was something to bring tears to a glass eye, what with my well-known war-work and a perfectly good husband still in the service. And I had made a threat to take action, and had no idea what it would be, only that now I certainly had to deliver the goods.
Well anyways, in despair and the limousine, I finally arrived at the Palatial and there in the lobby was several other White Kittens which were also late, so we give each other's clothes the once-over and asked after our healths and etc., and then hurried up in the elevator to where the meeting had already commenced.
Believe you me, my mind stuck to that meeting about as good as a W.S.S. which has been in your purse a month does when you find your card. The room was as full as could be with the biggest crowd I ever knew to turn out for it. But somehow while I am generally pretty well interested in any crowd, this time nothing seemed to register except my own thoughts. Even the chairlady couldn't hold my attention partially because she was Ruby Roselle, and what they wanted to elect that woman for I don't know because her head is certainly not the part of her which earned her theatrical reputation and a handsome back is no disgrace and if that and a handful of costume is art far be it from me to say anything: but it is neither refinement nor does it make a good executor for a live organization like the Kittens. And what is more, any woman which had her nose changed from Jewish to Greek right in the middle of a big feature fillum can't run any society to suit me, not to mention the fact that as I sat there watching her talk I come slowly to realize that she had several jewels and a couple of friends which was found to be pro-Germans and been interned, although nothing was ever proved onto Ruby herself.
Still, coming on top of what I had been going through the last couple of days, I took a sudden suspicion of her being lady-chairman to one of America's oldest organizations of the female gender, it having been formed 'way back in 1911. And what is furthermore, as I sat there hating her with her synthetic Christian nose and her genuine Jewish diamonds, the big idea come at last—a way to at once get something started before she did, because how did I know but she'd have the orchestra play "die Watch on Rinewine," and feed us on weenies and pumpernickle for supper at the ball if something radical wasn't done at once? That is, I mean radical in the right sense, of course. So when she says "Any other remarks?" I jumped to my feet quick before she could say "the meeting is injoined."
"Yes, Miss Ruby Schwartz Roselle, there is," I said. "I will be obliged to have the floor a minute."
"You can have it for all of me, dearie," says Ruby, sweetly, as she recognized her enemy. "Miss Marie La Tour has the floor."
And then without hardly knowing what I was doing and forgetting even to feel did my nose need powder before I commenced, I began talking with something fluttering inside me like a bird's wing. You know—a feeling like a try-out before a big-time manager. But behind the scare, the strength of knowing you can deliver the goods.
"Ladies and fellow or, I should say, sister-Kittens!" I commenced. "There was a time when the well-known words 'Now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of the party' so thrilled America that it has become not alone printed in all copy books, but is the first sentence which is learned by every typewriter. But since then times have changed until, believe you me, now is the time for all good parties to come to the aid of the nation in order to show all which are not Americans first just where they get off, and ladies, we here assembled are a party not to be scorned, what with a sustaining membership of over five hundred, and more than a thousand one-dollar members. And what is more, though admittedly mere females we have a vote in most places now, including this state, and while I have no doubt you have always intended to be good citizens, having the vote you are now obliged to be so."