Then Betty Sheridan, cool in pongee, came briskly in.
"Hello, Jinny!" said she. "Had you forgotten our plan tonight? You're chaperoning me, I hope you realize! I'm rather difficile, too. Genevieve, Pudge is outside; he'll take you out and buy you something cold. I took him to lunch today. It was disgraceful! Except for a frightful-looking mess called German Pot Roast With Carrots and Noodles Sixty, he ate nothing but melon, lemon-meringue pie, and pineapple special. I was absolutely ashamed! George, I would have speech with you."
"Private business, Betty?" he asked pleasantly. "My wife may not have the vote, but I trust her with all my affairs!"
"Indeed, I'm not in the least interested!" Genevieve said saucily.
She knew George was pleased with her as she went happily away.
"It's just as well Jinny went," said Betty, when she and the district-attorney-elect were alone. "Because it's that old bore Colonel Jaynes! He's come again, and he says he will see you!"
Deep red rose in George's handsome face.
"He came here last week, and he came yesterday," Betty said, sitting down, "and really I think you should see him! You see, George, in that far-famed article of yours, you remarked that 'a veteran of the civil as well as the Spanish war' had told you that it was the restless outbreaking of a few northern women that helped to precipitate the national catastrophe, and he wants to know if you meant him!"
"I named no names!" George said, with dignity, yet uneasily, too.
"I know you didn't. But you see we haven't many veterans of both wars," Betty went on, pleasantly. "And of course old Mrs. Jaynes is a rabid suffragist, and she is simply hopping. He's a mild old man, you know, and evidently he wants to square things with 'Mother.' Now, George, who did you mean?"