ropped noiselessly into a chair, and caught up
day-before-yesterday's paper.

He greeted her tenderly, but temperately. "Well, where've _you_
been?"

She had to catch her breath. "Oh, my _dear_, I've had the most
_wonderful_ time! I've--oh, it's been perfectly gorgeous! And I've got
it! I've got it!"

He had never seen her keyed to such a pitch, and manlike, he attempted
to calm her instead of rising to her own level. "Got what? St. Vitus'
dance?"

"_No!_ The scheme! The scheme we were looking for!"

Henry discarded his paper. "Shoot it."

She waved him off. "Just wait 'till I can breathe.... Do you remember
what you told me a long time ago about a talk you had with your aunt?
And she said bye-and-bye you'd see the writing on the wall?"

"Yes."

"Well, I've _seen_ it!"

"Whereabouts?"

"Wait.... And remember your talking to Mr. Mix, when he said you ought
to go to a League meeting and air your views?"

"Yes."

"Well, I went!"

He gazed at her. "You what?"

She nodded repeatedly. "It was a big public meeting. I was going past
Masonic Hall, and I saw the sign. So I went in ... oh, it was so
funny. The man at the door stared at me as if I'd been in a bathing
suit, or something, and he said to me in a sort of undertaker's voice:
'Are you one of us?' And I said I wasn't, but I was thinking about it,
and he said something about the ninety and nine, and gave me a blank
to fill out--only I didn't do it: I used it for something _lots_
better: I'll show you in a minute--and then I sat down, and pretty
soon Mr. Mix got up to talk,--and you _should_ have seen the way your
aunt looked at him; as if he'd been a tin god on wheels--and he
bragged about what the League was doing, and how it had already
purified the city, but that was only a beginning--and what a lot more
it was going to do--oh, it was just _ranting_--but everybody clapped
and applauded--only the man next to me said it was politics instead of
reform--and then he went on to talk about that ordinance 147, and what
it really meant, and how they were going to use it like a bludgeon
over the heads of wrong-doers, and all that sickening sort of
thing--and the more he talked the more I kept thinking.... My _dear_,
all that ordinance says--at least, all they _claim_ it says--is that
we can't keep open on Sunday for _profit_, isn't it?"

Henry was a trifle dizzy, but he retained his perspective. "Yes, but
who'd want to keep open for charity?"

She gave a l