ore you are thirty. A
fat mayoress would never do_'"]

"If I'd known what was before me twenty years ago, I'd have been more
careful. One--two--three! Can't do what's before me unless I reduce.
Avoid oatmeal and cream, that's what does it! You may be mayor of this
town before you are thirty. A fat mayoress would never do. It would
suggest beer! And look at me. I'm already so fat I have to lie down to
take my exercise! But Regis and I have planned enough work to keep you
lean this summer," she added, sitting up apparently satisfied with her
state of exhaustion.

"That's what I came to see you about," said the girl, seating herself
and looking down sorrowfully. "Father is dreadfully upset. He has
forbidden me to mention woman suffrage in the house."

"Well, don't, then; don't speak of it at all to him."

"But he will never consent to my holding this trusteeship."

"Aren't you twenty-one?"

"I'm twenty-four, as to that, but----"

"If you were your father's son, do you think he would forbid your having
your own convictions and living up to them?" the older woman
interrupted.

"No, but I'm only his daughter!" Selah said.

"Can't you see that is provided for? If he forbade you the house, you
still have twelve hundred dollars a year, which is certainly more than
he could afford to give you."

"That isn't it: he can't do without me, he needs me."

"Listen to me, Selah! Men have been our little children for so long that
we do not know how to wean them. Here you are, ready to resign the
greatest opportunity any young woman has ever had in this state in order
to stay at home and break your father's breakfast eggs and putter over
him and keep him soothed by agreeing with everything he says. That's
why men can vote and we can't. That's why they get everything, and we
get nothing but our board and clothes. We've humoured and pampered them
until they have no sense of us and our needs," she concluded, twisting
her hair angrily into a tight knot on the back of her head.

"Oh, I wish I knew what was right!" cried the girl, clasping her hands.

"We've tried the old sacrificial righteousness long enough, Selah, to
know that it is not contagious so far as we are concerned. Now you just
take my advice, and we'll have the new righteousness for women proved in
Jordan County before the end of this year!"

"As soon as that?" cried the girl, enthused in spite of herself.

"Yes, if we can win at all we can do it in a few months.