"Madam," gasped E. Eliot, who was the first to be released to speech, "it is unimportant who I am. But do you know that this woman with me is Mrs. George Remington, the wife of the candidate for district attorney—Mr. George Remington of Whitewater? There has been a mistake."
The hostess looked at Genevieve, who nodded a tearful confirmation. But the woman only smiled.
"My man don't make mistakes," she said laconically. "And, what's more to the point, miss, he's a friend of George Remington, and why should he be giving his lady a vacation? You are E. Eliot, and your friends think you're workin' too hard, so they're goin' to give you a nice rest. Nothin' will happen to you if you are a lady, as I think you are. And when I find out who this other lady is, we'll make her as welcome as you!"
She went out of the room, locking the door behind her as the two women struggled vainly with their bonds. In an instant she returned.
"My man says to tell the one who thinks she's Mrs. George Remington that she's spendin' the week-end with Mrs. Napoleon Boneypart." My man says he's a good friend of George Remington and is supportin' him for district attorney, and that's how he can make it so pleasant here.
"And I'll tell you something else," she continued proudly. "When George got married, it was my man that went up and down Smoky Row and seen all the girls and got 'em to give a dollar apiece for them lovely roses labeled 'The Young Men's Republican Club.' Mr. Doolittle he seen to that. My man really collected fifty dollars more'n he turned in, and I got a diamond-set wrist watch with it! So, you see, we're real friendly with them Remingtons, and we're glad to see you, Mrs. Remington!"
"Oh, how horrible!" cried Geneviève. "There were eight dozen of those roses from the Young Men's Republican Club, and to think—-Oh, to think——"
"Well, now, George," cried Mr. Penfield Evans, "just stop and think. Use your bean, my boy! What is the one thing on earth that puts the fear of God into Pat Noonan? It's prohibition. Look at the prohibition map out West and at the suffrage map out West. They fit each other like the paper on the wall. Whatever women may lack in intelligence about some things, there is one thing woman knows—high and low, rich and poor! She knows that the saloon is her enemy, and she hits it; and Pat Noonan, seeing this rise of women investigating industry, makes common cause with Martin Jaffry and the whole employing class of Whitewater against the nosey interference of women.
"And Pat Noonan is depending on you," continued Evans. "He expects you to rise. He expects you to go to Congress—possibly to the Senate, and he figures that he wants to be dead sure you'll not get to truckling to decency on the liquor question. So he ties you up—or tries you out for a tie-up or a kidnapping; and Benjie Doolittle, who likes a sporting event, takes a chance that you'll stand hitched in a plan to rid the community of a political pest without seriously hurting the pest—a friendless old maid who won't be missed for a day or two, and whose disappearance can be hushed up one way or another after she appears too late for the election.
"Just figure things out, George. Do you think Noonan got Mike the Goat to assess the girls on the row a dollar apiece for your flowers from the Young Men's Republican Club, for his health! You had the grace to thank Pat, but if you didn't know where they came from," explained Mr. Evans cynically, "it was because you have forgotten where all Pat's floral offerings from the Y.M.R.C. come from at weddings and funerals! And Pat feels that you're his kind of people.