thern women. They lived
for that, nothing else. Pretty goods, expensive goods, and nice,
virtuous little baggages. Speculators in love, but not deliberate moral
beings. They had nice consciences, easily satisfied. They had nice
minds, easily blinded. Some of them were little termagants, all the
dearer for that to men who like to conquer the shrew in a woman, if they
do not have to do it too often. Besides, these little doll ladies were
public spirited. They did dainty things about town, and they were
charming while they were doing them. At this very moment they were on
their way to the Woman's Civic League and Cemetery Association, which
was meeting with Mabel Acres, who was the wife of the most prominent
merchant in the town, and by the same token she always served the most
expensive refreshments. Not a single one of them as they passed beneath
the windows of the National Bank Building would or could have believed
that her whole nature and attitude toward man was to be changed before
night.

Susan Walton, strangely excited and enhanced, now happened to glance
through the window, and the sight of the fluttering feminine pageant
below reminded her of something.

"Come, Selah!" she exclaimed, rising with unexpected alacrity. "We are
due at the Civic League and Cemetery Association, and we have work to do
there!"

"If I'm not mistaken in your expression, Susan, this will be the last
meeting of that organization," said the Judge.

"I'm hopeful that it is. The women in this town only want something to
do. And we've got it at last, if only we can make them see it!" she
said, as she passed through the door which he held open for her,
accompanied by Selah, who wore the half-baptized look of a vague young
soul still in doubt.

"Not a word about her arbor-vitae trees," said the Judge as he returned
to his desk. "I doubt if they'll ever be mentioned again. The weeds will
take the cemetery, and the women will stop fussing about clean
cuspidors in the courthouse. But what a din we shall have in this town
when they really get going. Well, God help us, it had to come! They are
no longer one flesh with us."

* * * * *

A town without women in the streets is like a meadow without flowers, a
bay tree without leaves, like the air without the wings of birds in it
and the sweet sounds they make there about their feathers and affairs.

Now since four o'clock not a woman had been seen on the streets of