Page:O Genteel Lady! (1926).pdf/61

 and tracts. Miss Gatherall wondered if there could not be some way of temporarily whitewashing the negroes, furnishing them with wigs, and thus boldly walking them over the border. Miss Purse recounted the plot of her next novel. The gaslight flickered, the bonnets nodded. Lanice, detached and contemplative in spite of her excitement, watched them dubiously. They were such kind, good women. There sat old little Amy Spence in her demoralizing Zouave bloomers and ankle-length skirt, her forehead bulged like a baby's.

'Miss Bardeen'—she looked up with her soft childish gaze—'I think this is one of the greatest, if not the greatest moment of my life. Why, I do not suppose so many intellectual, high-minded women have ever before been gathered in one room. Why, there will be a marker here like the one on Bunker Hill some day, my dear, and you'll live to see it. Why, you'll live to cast the vote. You'll see women set free from the slavery of their clothes. Look at me. I haven't the strength to drag enormous skirts about on the ground, you know, getting in and out of those horse-cars as I do, but just because they're up three inches, rude little boys call attention to my nether limbs, and sermons have been preached against them. Dear Miss Bardeen, you'll live to walk without hoops. Dear me! If my great-niece—dear good girl she is, too, but spiritually in slavery—has my laying-out, I'll go to my grave with skirts to the floor, and...'

She chuckled and blinked at Lanice, who could not