for
what they can get out of it."

"That's it exactly," answered Mr. Fyshe.

* * * * *

From all sides support came to the new league. The women of the
city--there were fifty thousand of them on the municipal voters
list--were not behind the men. Though not officials of the league they
rallied to its cause.

"Mr. Fyshe," said Mrs. Buncomhearst, who called at the office of the
president of the league with offers of support, "tell me what we can
do. I represent fifty thousand women voters of this city--"

(This was a favourite phrase of Mrs. Buncomhearst's, though it had
never been made quite clear how or why she represented them.)

"We want to help, we women. You know we've any amount of initiative, if
you'll only tell us what to do. You know, Mr. Fyshe, we've just as good
executive ability as you men, if you'll just tell us what to do.
Couldn't we hold a meeting of our own, all our own, to help the league
along?"

"An excellent idea," said Mr. Fyshe.

"And could you not get three or four men to come and address it so as
to stir us up?" asked Mrs. Buncomhearst anxiously.

"Oh, certainly," said Mr. Fyshe.

So it was known after this that the women were working side by side
with the men. The tea rooms of the Grand Palaver and the other hotels
were filled with them every day, busy for the cause. One of them even
invented a perfectly charming election scarf to be worn as a sort of
badge to show one's allegiance; and its great merit was that it was so
fashioned that it would go with anything.

"Yes," said Mr. Fyshe to his committee, "one of the finest signs of our
movement is that the women of the city are with us. Whatever we may
think, gentlemen, of the question of woman's rights in general--and I
think we know what we _do_ think--there is no doubt that the influence
of women makes for purity in civic politics. I am glad to inform the
committee that Mrs. Buncomhearst and her friends have organized all the
working women of the city who have votes. They tell me that they have
been able to do this at a cost as low as five dollars per woman. Some
of the women--foreigners of the lower classes whose sense of political
morality is as yet imperfectly developed--have been organized at a cost
as low as one dollar per vote. But of course with our native American
women, with a higher standard of education and morality, we can hardly
expect to do it as low as that."

* * * * *