e, and have patience till we can do our best. Now we are
expected to be as wise as men who have had generations of all the help
there is, and we scarcely anything. Let us have equal opportunities, and
in a few generations we will see what the judgement is. I like justice,
and we get very little of it.'

'Still shouting the battle-cry of freedom?' asked Demi, peering through
the banisters at this moment. 'Up with your flag! I'll stand by and lend
a hand if you want it. With you and Nan to lead the van, I think you
won't need much help.'

'You are a great comfort, Demi, and I'll call on you in all emergencies;
for you are an honest boy, and don't forget that you owe much to your
mother and your sisters and your aunts,' continued Nan. 'I do like men
who come out frankly and own that they are not gods. How can we think
them so when such awful mistakes are being made all the time by these
great creatures? See them sick, as I do, then you know them.'

'Don't hit us when we are down; be merciful, and set us up to bless and
believe in you evermore,' pleaded Demi from behind the bars.

'We'll be kind to you if you will be just to us. I don't say generous,
only just. I went to a suffrage debate in the Legislature last winter;
and of all the feeble, vulgar twaddle I ever heard, that was the worst;
and those men were our representatives. I blushed for them, and the
wives and mothers. I want an intelligent man to represent me, if I can't
do it myself, not a fool.'

'Nan is on the stump. Now we shall catch it,' cried Tom, putting up
an umbrella to shield his unhappy head; for Nan's earnest voice was
audible, and her indignant eye happened to rest on him as she spoke.

'Go on, go on! I'll take notes, and put in "great applause" liberally,'
added Demi, producing his ball-book and pencil, with his Jenkins air.

Daisy pinched his nose through the bars, and the meeting was rather
tumultuous for a moment, for Emil called: 'Avast, avast, here's a squall
to wind'ard'; Tom applauded wildly; Dan looked up as if the prospect of
a fight, even with words, pleased him, and Nat went to support Demi,
as his position seemed to be a good one. At this crisis, when everyone
laughed and talked at once, Bess came floating through the upper hall
and looked down like an angel of peace upon the noisy group below, as
she asked, with wondering eyes and smiling lips:

'What is it?'

'An indignation meeting. Nan and Alice are on the rampage, and we are