The sturdy oak;

CORNELL

UNIVERSITY

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Cornell University Library
PS 3537.T928

The sturdy oak:

3 1924 021 706 357

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STURDY OAK

a composite novel

of
American Politics

by

fourteen American authors

Samuel Merwin
Harry Leon Wilson

Fannie Hurst
Dorothy Canfield
Kathleen Norris
Henry Kitchell Webster
Anne O'Hagan
Mary Heaton Vorse
Alice Duer Miller
Ethel Watts Mumford
Marjorie Benton Cooke
William Allen White
Mary Austin
Leroy Scott

theme by Mary Austin
he chapters collected and (very cautiously) edited
by Elizabeth Jordan
illustrations by Heniy Raleigh

NEW YORK HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY
1917

PREFACE

At a certain committee meeting held in the spring of
1916, it was agreed that fourteen leading American
authors, known to be extremely generous as well as
gifted, should be asked to write a composite novel.

As I was not present at this particular meeting, it
was unanimously and joyously decided by those who
were present that I should attend to the trivial details
ox getting this novel together.

It appeared that all I had to do was:

First, to persuade each of the busy authors on the
list to write a chapter of the novel.

Second, to keep steadily on their trails from the
moment they promised their chapters until they turned
them in.

Third, to have the novel finished and published
serially during the autumn Campaign of 1917.

The carrying out of these requirements has not
been the childish diversion it may have seemed.
Splendid team work, however, has made success pos-
sible.

Every author represented, every worker on the
team, has gratuitously contributed his or her services ;
and every dollar realized by the serial and book pub-
lication of " The Sturdy Oak " will be devoted to the
Suffrage Cause. But the novel itself is first of all a
very human story of American life today. It neither
unduly nor unfairly emphasizes the question of equal
suffrage, and it should appeal to all lovers of good
fiction.

Therefore, pausing only to wipe the beads of per-
spiration from our brows, we urge every one to buy
this book!

Elizabeth Jordan.
New York,
November, 1917,

CONTENTS

CHAPTER

PAGE

I...

..By Samuel Merwin .

I

II...

. . By Harry Leon Wilson .

27

III...

. .By Fannie Hurst

SI

IV...

. . By Dorothy Canfield

71

V...

. . By Kathleen Norris

92

VI...

..By Henry Kitchell Webster

116

VII...

. .By Anne O'Hagan

143

VIII...

. . By Mary Heaton Vorse .

168

IX...

..By Alice Duer Miller .

185

X...

..By Ethel Watts Mumford .

203

XI...

. . By Marjorie Benton Cook

23s

XII...

. . By William Allen White .

261

XIII...

. . By Mary Austin

286

XIV. . .

. . By Leroy Scott ....

312

ILLUSTRATIONS

" Nobody ever means that a woman really can't
get along without a man's protection, because
look at the women who do " . . Frontispiece

FACING
PAGB

It was hard on the darling old boy to come home
to Miss Emelene and the cat and Eleanor and
Alys every night ! 104

" You mean because she's a suffragist ? You sent
her away for that! Why, really, that's
tyranny!" . . 174

Across the way, Mrs. Herrington, the fighting
blood of five generations of patriots roused in
her, had reinstated the Voiceless Speech . . 314

PRINCIPAL CHARACTERS

George Remington. . . . Aged twenty-six; newly-
married. Recently returned to his home town.
New York State, to take up the practice of law.
Politically ambitious, a candidate for District At-
torney. Opposed to woman suffrage.

Genevieve. . . . His wife, aged twenty-three,
graduate of Smith. Devoted to George; her ideal
being to share his every thought.

Betty Sheridan. ... A friend of Genevieve.
Very pretty; one of the first families, well-to-do but
in search of economic independence. Working as
stenographer in George's office; an ardent Suffragist.

Penfield Evans. . . . Otherwise " Penny," George's
partner, in love with Betty. Neutral on the subject
of Suffrage.

Alys Brewster-Smith. . . . Cousin of George, once
removed; thirty-three, a married woman by profes-
sion, but temporarily widowed. Anti-suffragist. One
Angel Child aged five.

Martin Jaffry. . . . Uncle to George, bachelor of
uncertain age and certain income. The widow's des-
tined prey.

Cousin Emelene. . . . On Genevieve's side. Be-
tween thirty-five and forty, a born spinster but cling-
ing to the hope of marriage as the only career for
women. Has a small and decreasing income. Af-
fectedly feminine and genuinely incompetent.

X PRINCIPAL CHARACTERS

Mrs. Harvey Herrington. . . . President of the
Woman's Club, the Municipal League, Suffrage So-
ciety leader, wealthy, cultured and possessing a sense
of humor.

Percival Pauncefoot Sheridan. . . . Betty's brother,
fifteen, commonly called Pudge. Pink, pudgy, sensi-
tive; always imposed upon, always grouchy and too
good-natured to assert himself.

E. Eliot. . . . Real estate agent (added in Chapter
VI by Henry Kitchell Webster).

Benjamin Doolittle. ... A leader of his party, and
somewhat careless where he leads it. (Added in
Anne O'Hagan's Chapter).

Patrick Noonan. ... A follower of Doolittle.

Time. . . . The Present.

Place. . . . Whitewater, N. Y. A manufacturing
town of from ten to fifteen thousand inhabitants.

THE STURDY OAK

CHAPTER I
BY SAMUEL MERWIN

Genevieve Remington had been called beauti-
ful. She was tall, with brown eyes and a fine spun
mass of golden-brown hair. She had a gentle smile,
that disclosed white, even teeth. Her voice was not
unmusical. She was twenty-three years old and
possessed a husband who, though only twenty-six,
had already shown such strength of character and
such aptitude at the criminal branch of the law that
he was now a candidate for the post of district
attorney on the regular Republican ticket.

The popular impression was that he would be
elected hands down. His address on Alexander
Hamilton at the Union League Club banquet at
Hamilton City, twenty-five miles from Whitewater
(with which smaller city we are concerned in this
narrative), had been reprinted in full in the Hamil-

2 THE STURDY OAK

ton City Tribune; and Mrs. Brewster-Smith re-
ported that former Congressman Hancock had
compared it, not unfavorably, with certain pubhc
utterances of the Honorable EHhu Root.

George Remington was an inch more than six feet
tall, with sturdy shoulders, a chin that gave every
indication of stubborn strength, a frank smile, and
a warm, strong handclasp. He was connected by
blood (as well as by marriage) with five of the
eight best families in Whitewater. Mr. Martin
Jaffry, George's uncle and sole inheritor of the
great Jaflfry estate (and a bachelor), was known to
favor his candidacy; was supposed, indeed, to be
a large contributor to the Remington campaign
fund. In fact, George Remington was a lucky
young man, a coming young man.

George and Genevieve had been married five
weeks; this was their first day as master and mis-
tress of the old Remington place on Sheridan Road.

Genevieve, that afternoon, was in the long living-
room, trying out various arrangements of the
flowers that had been sent in. There were a great
many flowers. Most of them came from admirers

iHE sTUkuy uAK 3

of George. The Young Men's Republican Club,
for one item, had sent eight dozen roses. But
Genevieve, still a-thrill with the magic of her
five-weeks-long honeymoon, tremulously happy in
the cumulative proof that her husband was the
noblest, strongest, bravest man alive, felt only joy
in his popularity.

As his wife she shared his triumphs. " For better
or worse, for richer or poorer, in sickness and
health ..." the ancient phrases repeated them-
selves so many times in her softly confused thought,
as she moved about among the flowers, that they
finally took on a rhythm —

"For better or worse,
For richer or poorer.
For richer or poorer.
For better or worse "

On this day her life was beginning. She had
given herself irrevocably into the hands of this
man. She would live only in him. Her life would
find expression only through his. His strong.

4 THE STURDY OAK

trained mind would be her guide, his sturdy courage
her strength. He would build for them both, for
the twain that were one.

She caught up one red rose, winked the moisture
from her eyes, and gazed — rapt, lips parted, color
high — out at the close-clipped lawn behind the privet
hedge. The afternoon would soon be waning —
in another hour or so. She must not disturb him
now.

In an hour, say, she would run up the stairs and
tap at his door. And he would come out, clasp her
in his big arms, and she would stand on the tips
of her toes and kiss away the wrinkles between his
brows, and they would walk on the lawn and
talk about themselves and the miracle of their
love.

The clock on the mantel struck three. She
pouted ; turned and stared at it. " Well," she told
herself, " I'll wait until half-past four."

The doorbell rang.

Genevieve's color faded. The slim hand that
held the rose trembled a very little. Her first
caller !

THE STURDY OAK 5

She decided that it would be best not to talk about
George. Not one word about George! Her feel-
ings were her secret — and his.

Marie ushered in two ladies. One, who rushed
forward with outstretched hand, was a curiously
vital-appearing creature in black — plainly a widow
— hardly more than thirty-two or thirty-three, fresh
of skin, rather prominent as to eyeballs, yet, every-
thing considered, a handsome woman. This was
Alys Brewster-Smith. The other, shorter, slighter,
several years older, a faded, smiling, tremulously
hopeful spinster, was Genevieve's own cousin,
Emelene Brand.

" It's so nice of you to come — " Genevieve be-
gan timidly, only to be swept aside by the superior
aggressiveness and the stronger voice of Mrs.
Brewster-Smith.

" My dear! Isn't it perfectly delightful to see
you actually mistress of this wonderful old home.
And " — her slightly prominent eyes swiftly took in
furniture, pictures, rugs, flowers, — " how wonder-
fully you have managed to give the old place your
own tone ! "

6 THE STURDY OAK

" Nothing has been changed," murmured Gene-
vieve, a thought bewildered.

" Nothing, my dear, but yourself ! I am jo look-
ing forward to a good talk with you. Emelene
and I were speaking of that only this noon. And
I can't tell you how sorry I am that our first call
has to be on a miserable political matter. Tell me,
dear, is that wonderful husband of yours at home ? "

" Why — yes. But I am not to disturb him."

" Ah, shut away in his den ? "

Genevieve nodded.

" It's a very important paper he has to write.
It has to be done now, before he is drawn into the
whirl of campaign work."

"Of course! Of course! But I'm afraid the
campaign is whirling already. I will tell you what
brought us, my dear. You know of course that
Mrs. Harvey Herrington has come out for suffrage
— thrown in her whole personal weight and, no
doubt, her money. I can't understand it — ^with her
home, and her husband — going into the mire of
politics. But that is what she has done. And Grace
Hatfield called up not ten minutes ago to say that

THE STURDY OAK 7

she has just led a delegation of ladies up to your
husband's office. Think of it — to his office! The
first day! . . . Well, Emelene, it is some con-
solation that they won't find him there."

" He isn't going to the office today," said Gene-
vieve. " But what can they want of him? "

" To get him to declare for suffrage, my dear."
" Oh— I'm sure he wouldn't do that ! "
" Are you, my dear? Are you sure?"

'• Well "

"He has told you his views, of course? "
Genevieve knit her brows. " Why, yes — of

course, we've talked about things "

" My dear, of course he is against suffrage."
" Oh yes, of course. I'm sure he is. Though,
you see, I would no more think of intruding in
George's business affairs than he would think of
intruding in my household duties."

" Naturally, Genevieve. And very sweet and
dear of you! But I'm sure you will see how very
important this is. Here we are, right at the be-
ginning of his campaign. Those vulgar women are
going to hound him. They've begun already. As

8 THE STURDY OAK

our committee wrote him last week, it is vitally
important that he should declare himself unequivo-
cally at once."

" Oh, yes," murmured Genevieve, " of course.
I can see that."

The doors swung open. A thin little man of
forty to fifty stood there, a dry but good-humored
man, with many wrinkles about his quizzical blue
eyes, and sandy hair at the sides and back of an
otherwise bald head. He was smartly dressed in
a homespun Norfolk suit. He waved a cap of
homespun in greeting.

" Afternoon, ladies ! Genevieve, a bachelor's ad-
miration and respect! I hope that boy George has
got sense enough to be proud of you. But they
haven't at that age. They're all for them-
selves."

" Oh no. Uncle Martin," cried Genevieve,
" George is the most generous "

Mr. Martin Jaffry flicked his cap. " All right.
All right! He is." And slowly retreated.

Mrs. Brewster-Smith, an eager light in her eyes,
moved part way across the room. " But we can't

THE STURDY OAK 9

let you run away like this, Mr. Jaffry. Do sit down
and tell us about the work you are doing at the
Country Club. Is it to be bowling alley and swim-
ming pool "

" Bowling alley and swimming pool, yes. Tell
me, chick, might a humble constituent speak to the
great man? "

Genevieve hesitated. " I'm sure he'd love to see
you. Uncle Martin. But he did say "

" Not to be disturbed by anybody, eh ? "

" Yes, Uncle Martin. It's a very important state-
ment he has to prepare before "

" Good day, then. You look fine in the old house,
chick!"

Mr. Jaffry donned his cap of homespun, ran
down the steps and out the front walk, hopped into
his eight-cylinder roadster, and was off down the
street in a second. There was a sharp decisiveness
about his exit, and about the sudden speed of his
machine; all duly noted by Mrs. Brewster-Smith,
who had gone so far as to move down the room to
the front window and watch the performance with
narrowed eyes.

lo THE STURDY OAK

The JaflFry Building stands at the southwest
corner of Fountain Square. It boasts six stories,
mosaic flooring in the halls, and the only passenger
elevator in Whitewater. The ground floor was
given over to Humphrey's drug store ; and most of
Humphrey's drug store was given over to the im-
mense marble soda fountain and the dozen or more
wire-legged tables and the two or three dozen wire
chairs that served to accommodate the late after-
noon and evening crowd.

At the moment the fountain had but one patron —
a remarkably fat boy of, perhaps, fifteen, with
plump cheeks and drooping mouth. . . . The row
of windows across the second floor front of the
building, above Humphrey's, bore, each, the legend
— Remington and Evans, Attorneys at Law.

The fat boy was Percival Sheridan, otherwise
Pudge. His sister, Betty Sheridan, worked in the
law offices directly overhead and possessed a heart
of stone.

Betty was rich, at least in the eyes of Pudge.
For more than a year (Betty was twenty-two) she
had enjoyed a private income. Pudge definitely

THE STURDY OAK n

knew this. She had money to buy out the soda
fountain. But her character, thought Pudge, might
be summed up in the statement that she worked
when she didn't have to (people talked about this;
even to him !) and flatly refused to give her, brother
money for soda.

As if a little soda ever hurt anybody. She took
it herself, often enough. Within five minutes he
had laid the matter before her — up in that solemn
office, where they made you feel so uncomfortable.
She had said : " Pudge Sheridan, you're killing
yourself! Not one cent more for wrecking your
stomach ! "

She had called him " Pudge." For months he
had been reminding her that his name was Percival.
And he wasn't wrecking his stomach. That was
silly talk. He had eaten but two nut sundaes and
a chocolate frappe since luncheon. It wasn't soda
and candy that made him so fat. Some folks just
were fat, and some folks were thin. That was all
there was to it !

Pudge himself would have a private income when
he was twenty-one. Six years off . . . and Billy

12 THE STURDY OAK

Simmons in his white apron, was waiting now, on
the other side of the marble counter, for his order
— and grinning as he waited. Six years! Why,
Pudge would be a man then — too old for nut sun-
daes and chocolate frappes, too far gone down the
sober slope of life to enjoy anjrthing !

Pudge wriggled nervously, locked his feet around
behind the legs of the high stool, rubbed a fat
forefinger on the edge of the counter, and watched
the finger intently with gloomy eyes.

"Well, what'll it be, Pudge? " This from Billy
Simmons.

" My name ain't Pudge."

"Very good. Mister Sheridan. What'll it be?"

" One of those chocolate marshmallow nut sun-
daes, I guess, if — if "

" If what. Mister Sheridan? "

" — if, oh well, just charge it."

Billy Simmons paused in the act of reaching for
a sundae glass. The smile left his face.

Pudge, though he did not once look up from
that absorbing little operation with the fat fore-
finger, felt this pause and knew that Billy's grin had

THE STURDY OAK 13

gone; and his own mouth drooped and drooped.
It was a tense moment.

" You see, Pudge," Billy began in some embar-
rassment, only to conclude rather sharply, " I'll
have to ask Mr. Humphrey. Your sister said we
weren't "

" Oh, well ! " sighed Pudge. Getting down from
the stool he waddled slowly out of the store.

It was no use going up against old Humphrey.
He had tried that. He went as far as the fire-plug,
close to the corner, and sank down upon it. Every-
body was against him. He would sit here awhile
and think it over. Perhaps he could figure out
some way of breaking through the conspiracy.
Then Mr. Martin Jaffry drove up to the curb and
he had to move his legs. Mr. Jaffry said, " Hello,
Pudge," too. It was all deeply annoying.

Meantime, during the past half-hour, the law
offices of Remington and Evans were not lacking
in the sense of life and activity. Things began mov-
ing when Penny Evans (christened Penfield) came
back from lunch. He wore an air — Betty Sheridan
noted, from her typewriter desk within the rail —

H THE STURDY OAK

of determination. His nod toward herself was dis-
tinctly brusque; a new quality which gave her a
moment's thought. And then when he had hung
up his hat and was walking past her to his own
private office, he indulged in a faint, fleeting
grin.

Betty considered him. She had known Penny
Evans as long as she could remember knowing any-
body; and she had never seen him look quite as he
looked this afternoon.

The buzzer sounded. It was absurd, of course;
nobody else in the office. He could have spoken —
you could hear almost every sound over the seven-
foot partitions.

She rose, waited an instant to insure perfect com-
posure, smoothed down her trim shirtwaist, pushed
back a straying wisp of her naturally wavy hair,
picked up her notebook and three sharp pencils,
and went quietly into his office.

He sat there at his flat desk — his blond brows
knit, his mouth firm, a light of eager good humor
in his blue eyes.

" Take this," he said . . .

THE STURDY OAK 15

Betty seated herself opposite him, and was in-
stantly ready for work.

"... Memorandum. From rentals — the old
Evans property on Ash Street, the two houses on
Wilson Avenue South, and the factory lease in the
South Extension, a total of slightly over $3600.

" New paragraph. From investments in bonds,
railway and municipal, an average the last four
years of $2800.

" New paragraph. From law practice, last year,
over $4500. Will be considerably more this year.
Total "

"New paragraph?"

"No. Continue. Total, $10,900. This year
will be close to $12,000. Don't you think that's a
reasonably good showing for an unencumbered man
of twenty-seven?"

" Dictation— that last ? "

" No, personal query, Penny to Betty."

"Yes, then, it is very good. You want this in
memorandum form. Any carbons ? "

" One carbon — in the form of a diamond — gift
from Penny to Betty."

1 6 THE STURDY OAK

Miss Sheridan settled back in her chair, tapped
her pretty mouth with her pencil, and surveyed the
blond young man. Her eyes were blue — frank,
capable eyes.

" Penny, I like my work here "

" I should hope so "

" And I don't want to give it up."

" Then don't."

" I shall have to. Penny, if you don't stop break-
ing your word. It was a definite agreement, you
know. You were not to propose to me, on any
working day, before seven p.m. This is a proposal
of course "

"Yes, of course, but I've just "

" That makes twice this month, then, that you've
broken the agreement. Now I can go on and put
my mind on my work, if you'll let me. Otherwise,
I shall have to get a job where they will let
me.

" But, Betty, I've just this noon sat down and
figured up where I stand. It has frightened me a
little. I didn't realize I was taking in more than
ten thousand a year. And all of a sudden it struck

THE STURDY OAK 17

me that I've been an imbecile to wait, or make any
agreement ' '

" Then you broke it deliberately ? "

"Absolutely. Betty — no fooling now; I'm in
earnest "

Studying him, she saw that he was intensely in
earnest.

" You see, child, I've tried to be patient because
I know how you were brought up, what you're
used to. Why, I wouldn't dream of asking you to
be my wife unless I could feel pretty sure of
being able to give you the comforts you've
always had and ought to have. But hang it,
Betty, I can do it right! I can give you a
home that's worthy of you. Any time! This
year, even ! "

" Penny, do you think I care what your income
is — for one minute ? "

" Why— why "

"When I'm earning twenty dollars a week my-
self and prouder of it than "

" But that's absurd, Betty — for you to be work-
ing — as a stenographer, of all things ! A. girl with

i8 THE STURDY OAK

your looks and your gifts and all that's back of
you."

"You mean that I should make marriage my
profession? "

" Well— well "

" Probably that's why we keep missing each other,
Penny. I've pinned my flag to the principle of
economic independence. You're looking for a girl
who will marry for a living. There are lots of
them. Pretty, attractive girls, too. Your difficulty
is, you want that sort. You really believe all girls
are that sort at heart, and you think my independ-
ence a fad — something I shall get over. Don't you,
now ? "

"Well, I'll confess I can't see it as the normal
thing. Yes, I believe — I hope — you will get over
it."

" Well — " Miss Sheridan slammed her book
shut and stood up — " I won't."

She stepped to the door.

" And the agreement stands. I want to keep on
working. And I want to keep on being fond of
you. That agreement is necessary to both desires."

THE STURDY OAK 19

She opened the door, hesitated and a hint of
mischief flashed across her face. " I'll tell you just
the person for you, Penny. Really. Marriage is
her profession. She's very experienced. Tempo-
rarily out of a job — Alys Brewster-Smith."

He snatched a carnation from the glass on his
desk and threw it at her. It struck a closed door.

The outer door opened just then, and Mr. Martin
JafFry stepped in. He nodded, with his little quiz-
zical smile, to the composed young woman who
stood within the railing.

"Anybody here, Betty?"

A slight movement of her prettily poised head in-
dicated the door marked " Mr. Evans." And she
said, " Penny's there."

" Is he shut up, too ? His partner is too impor-
tant to be seen today."

" Oh no," Betty replied, inscrutably sober, " he's
not important."

Mr. Jaffry wrinkled up his eyes, chuckled softly,
then stepped to the door of the unimportant one.
Before opening it, he turned.

20 THE STURDY OAK

" Mrs. Harvey Herrington been in ? "

" Twice with a committee."

"Any idea what she wanted?"

Betty was aware that the whimsical and round-
about Mr. Jaffry knew everything about everybody
in Whitewater. She was further aware that he had,
undoubtedly, reasons of his own for questioning her.
He was always asking questions, anyway. Worse
than a Chinaman. And for some reason — perhaps
because he was Martin Jaffry — you always answered
his questions.

" Yes," said Betty. " She wants to pledge him
to suffrage."

" Umm ! Yes, I see ! You wouldn't be against
that yourself, would you? "

" Naturally not. I'm secretary of the Second
Ward Suffrage Club."

" Umm ! Yes, yes ! " With which illuminating
comment, Mr. Jaffry tapped on Penny Evans' door,
opened it and entered.

" Spare a minute ? " he inquired.

" Sure," said Penny ; " two, ten ! Take a chair."

" No," replied Mr. Jaffry, " I won't take a chair.

THE STURDY OAK 21

Think better on my feet. I'm in a bit of a quan-
dary. Suppose you tell me what this important
paper is that George is drawing up. Do you know ? "

" I do."

" Is he coming out against suffrage ? "

" Flatly."

" Umm ! " Mr. Jaffry flicked his cap about. " I
want to see George. He mustn't do that."

" Say, Mr. Jaffry, you haven't swung over "

" Not at all. It's tactics. I ought to see him."

" Why not run out to his house "

"Just been there. Ran away. Some one there
I'm afraid of."

"Telephone?"

Mr. Jaffry shook his head and lowered his voice.

" With Betty hearing it at this end, and the com-
mittee from the Antis sitting it out down there —
the telephone's on the stair landing "

He pursed his lips, waved his cap slowly to and
fro and observed it with a whimsical expression
on his sandy face, then glanced out of the window.
He stepped closer, looking sharply down. A very
fat boy with pink cheeks and a downcast expression

22 THE STURDY OAK

was sitting on a fire-plug. Mr. Jaffry leaned
out.

" Pudge," he called, " come up here a minute."

On the Remington and Evans stationery he pen-
ciled a note, which he sealed. Then he scribbled
another — to Mrs. George Remington, asking her
to hand George the inclosure the moment he ap-
peared from his work. The two he slipped into a
large envelope. The very fat boy stood before him.

" Want to make a quarter, Pudge ? Take this
letter, right now, to Mrs. George Remington. Give
it to her personally. It's the old Remington place,
you know."

He felt in his change pocket. It was empty. He
hesitated, turned to Evans, then, reconsidering, pro-
duced a dollar bill from another pocket and gave it
to the boy.

" Now run," he said.

The boy, speechless, turned and moved out of the
office. His sister spoke to him, but he did not turn
his head. He rolled down the stairs to the street,
stood a moment in front of Humphrey's, drew a
sudden breath that was almost a gasp, waddled into

THE STURDY OAK 23

the store, advanced directly on the soda fountain,
and with a blazing red face and angrily triumphant
eyes confronted Billy Simmons.

" I'll take a chocolate marshmallow nut sundae,"
he said. "And you needn't be stingy with the
marshmallow, either 1 "

At ten minutes past four, the anxious Antis in
the Remington living-room heard the candidate for
district attorney running down the stairs, and even
Mrs. Brewster-Smith was hushed. The candidate
stopped, however, on the landing. They heard him
lift the telephone receiver. He called a number.
Then

"Sentinel office? . . . Mr. Ledbetter, please.
. . . Hello, Ledbetter! Remington speaking. I
have that statement ready. Will you send a man
around ? . . . Yes, right away. And I wish you'd
put it on the wires. Display it just as prominently
as you can, won't you? . . . Thanks. That's
fine ! Good-by."

He ran back upstairs.

But shortly he appeared, wearing the distrait,

24 THE STURDY OAK

exalted expression of the genius who has just passed
through the creative act. He looked very tall and
strong as he stood before the mantel, receiving the
congratulations of Mrs. Brewster-Smith and the
timid admiration of Cousin Emelene. His few
words were well chosen and were uttered with
dignity.

" And now, dear Mr. Remington, I'm sure I don't
need to ask you if you are taking the right stand
on suffrage." This from Mrs. Brewster-Smith.

The candidate smiled tolerantly.

" H unequivocal opposition is ' right ' "

" Oh, you dear man ! I was sure we could count
on you. Isn't it splendid, Genevieve 1 "

The reporters came.

It was a busy evening for the young couple.
There were relatives for dinner. Other relatives
and an old friend or two came later. Throughout,
George wore that quietly exalted expression, and
carried himself with the new dignity.

To the adoring Genevieve his chin had never
appeared so long and strong, his thought had

THE STURDY OAK 25

never seemed so elevated, his quiet self-respect had
never been so commanding. He was no longer
merely her George, he was now a public figure.
Soon he would be district attorney; then, very
likely, Governor ; then — well, Senator ; and finally —
it was possible — some one had to be — President of
the United States. He had begun, this day, by
making a great decision, by stepping boldly out on
principle, on moral principle, and announcing him-
self a defender of the home, of the right.

At midnight, the last guest departed. George
and Genevieve stepped out into the summer moon-
light and strolled arm in arm down the walk.

Waddling up the street appeared a very fat boy.

" Why, Pudge," cried Genevieve, " what on earth
are you doing out at this time of night ! "

" I'm going home, I tell you ! " muttered the boy,
on the defensive. He carried a large bag of what
seemed to be chocolate creams, from which he was
eating.

As he passed, a twinge of memory disturbed
him. He fumbled in his pockets.

" I was to give you this," he said then; and leav-

26 THE STURDY OAK

ing a crumpled envelope in Genevieve's hand, he
walked on as rapidly as he could.

A few minutes later, standing under the light in
the front hall, George Remington read this penciled
note:

" I stood ready to contribute more than I prom-
ised — any amount to put you over. But if you give
out a statement against suffrage you're a damn fool
and I withdraw every cent. A man with no more
political sense and skill than that isn't worth help-
ing. You should have advised me.

" M. J."

CHAPTER II
BY HARRY LEON WILSON

It may have been surmised that our sterling
yoimg candidate for district attorney had not yet
become skilled in dalliance with the equivocal; that
he was no adept in ambiguity; that he would con-
front all issues with a rugged valiance susceptible
of no misconstruction ; that, in short, George Rem-
ington was no trimmer.

If he opposed an issue, one knew that he opposed
it from the heart out. He said so and he meant it.
And, being opposed to the dreadful heresy of equal
suffrage, no reader of the Whitewater Sentinel that
morning could say, as the shrewd so often say of
our older statesmen, that George was " side-step-
ping."

Not George's the mellow gift to say, in effect,
that of course woman should vote the instant she
wishes to, though perhaps that day has not yet

87

28 THE STURDY OAK

come. Meantime the speaker boldly defies the
world to show a man holding woman in loftier re-
gard than he does, or ready to accord her a higher
value in all true functions of the body politic.
Equal suffrage, thank God, is inevitable at some
future time, but until that glorious day when we
can be assured that the sex has united in a demand
for it, it were perhaps as well not to cloud the
issues of the campaign now opening; though let it
be understood, and he cannot put this too plainly,
that he reveres the memory of his gray-haired
mother without whose tender ministrations and wise
guidance he could never have reached the height
from which he now speaks. And so let us pass on
to the voting on these canal bonds, the true inward-
ness of which, thanks to the venal activities of a
corrupt opposition, even an exclusively male con-
stituency has thus far failed to comprehend. And
so forth.

Our hero, then, had yet to acquire this finesse.
As we are now privileged to observe him, he is as
easy to understand as the multiplication table, as
little devious and, alas! as lacking in suavity.

THE STURDY OAK 29

Yet, let us be fair to George. Mere innocence
of guile, of verbal trickery, had not alone sufficed
for his passionate bluntness in the present crisis.
At a later stage in his career as a husband he might
have been equally blunt; yet never again, perhaps,
would he have been so emotional in his opposition
to woman polluting herself with the mire of politics.

Be it recalled that but five weeks had elapsed
since George had solemnly promised to cherish and
protect the fairest of the non- voting sex — at least
in his State — and he was still taking his mission
seriously. As he wrote the words that were now
electrifying, in a manner of speaking, the readers
of the Sentinel, and of neighboring journals with
enough enterprise to secure them, he had beheld
his own Genevieve, fine, flawless, tenderly nourished
flower that she was, being dragged from her high
place with the most distressing results.

He saw her rushed from the sacred shelter of her
home and made to attend primaries; he saw her
compelled to strive tearfully with problems that re-
volted all her finer instincts; he saw her insulted at
polling booths; 'saw her voting in company with

30 THE STURDY OAK

persons of both sexes whom one could never know.

He saw her tainted, bruised, beaten down in the
struggle, losing little by little all sense of the holy
values of Wife, Mother, Home. As he wrote he
heard her weakening cries for help as she perished,
and more than once his left arm instinctively curved
to shield her.

Was it not for his wife, then; nay, for wifehood
itself, that he wrote? And so, was it quite fair for
unmarried Penfield Evans, burning at his breakfast
table a cynical cigarette over the printed philippic,
to murmur, " Gee ! old George has spilled the
beans ! "

Simple words enough and not devoid of friendly
concern. But should he not have divined that
George had been appalled to his extremities of
speech by the horrendous vision of his fair young
bride being hurled into depths where she would be
obliged, if not to have opinions of her own, at
least to vote with the rabble as he might decide they
ought to vote?

And should not other critics known to us have
divined the racking anguish under which George

THE STURDY OAK 31

had labored? For one, should not Elizabeth
Sheridan, amateur spinster, have been all sympathy
for one who was palpably more an alarmed bride-
groom than a mere candidate?

Should not her maiden heart have been touched
by this plausible aspect of George's dilemma, rather
than her mere brain to have been steeled to a humor-
ous disparagement tinged with bitterness?

And yet, " What rot ! " muttered Miss Sheridan,
— " silly rot, bally rot, tommy rot, and all the other
kinds!"

Hereupon she creased a brow not meant for
creases and defaced an admirable nose with grievous
wrinkles of disdain. " Sacred names of wife and
mother ! " This seemed regrettably like swearing
as she delivered it, though she quoted verbatim.
" Sacred names of petted imbeciles ! " she amended.

Then, with berserker fury, crumpling her Sentinel
into a ball, she venomously hurled it to the depths
of a waste basket and religiously rubbed the feel
of it from her fingers. As she had not even glanced
at the column headed " Births, Deaths, Marriages,"
it will be seen that her agitation was real.

32 THE STURDY OAK

And surely a more discerning sympathy might
have been looked for from the seasoned Martin
Jaffry. A bachelor full of years and therefore
with illusions not only unimpaired but ripened, who
more quickly than he should have divined that his
nephew for the moment viewed all womankind as
but one multiplied Genevieve, upon whom it would
be heinous to place the shackles of suffrage?

Perhaps Uncle Martin did divine this. Perhaps
he was a mere trimmer, a rank side-stepper, steeped
in deceit and ever ready to mouth the abominable
phrase " political expediency." It were rash to
affirm this, for no analyst has ever fathomed the
heart of a man who has come to his late forties a
bachelor by choice. One may but guess from the
ensuing meager data.

Uncle Martin at a certain corner of Maple Avenue
that morning, fell in with Penfield Evans, who,
clad as the lilies of a florist's window, strode buoy-
antly toward his office, the vision of his day's toil
pinkly suffused by an overlaying vision of a Betty
or Sheridan character. Mr. Evans bubbled his
greeting.

THE STURDY OAK 33

" Morning ! Have you seen it ? Oh, say, have
you seen it ? "

The immediate manner of Uncle Martin not less
than his subdued garb of gray, his dark gloves and
his somber stick, intimated that he saw nothing to
bubble about.

" He has burned his bridges behind him." The
speaker looked as grim as any bachelor-by-choice
ever may.

" Regular little fire-bug," blithely responded Mr.
Evans, moderating his stride to that of the other.

" Can't understand it," resumed the gloomy
uncle. " I sent him word in time ; sent it from your
office by messenger. It was plain enough. I told
him no money of mine would go into his campaign
if he made a fool of himself — or words to that
effect."

" Phew ! Cast you off, did he ? Just like that ? "

" Just like that ! Went out of his way to overdo
it, too. Needn't have come out half so strong. No
chance now to backwater — not a chance on earth
to explain what he really did mean — and make it
something different."

34 THE STURDY OAK

" Quixotic ! That's how it reads to me."

Uncle Martin here became oracular, his somber
stick gesturing to point his words.

" Trouble with poor George, he's been silly
enough to blurt out the truth, what every man of us
thinks in his heart— - — "

" Eh ? " said Mr. Evans quickly, as one who has
been jolted.

" No more sense than to come right out and
say what every one of us thinks in his secret heart
about women. I think it and you think it "

" Oh, well, if you put it that way," admitted
young Mr. Evans gracefully. " But of course "

" Certainly, of course! We all think it — sacred
names of home and mother and all the rest of it;
but a man running for office these days is a chump
to say so, isn't he ? Of course he is ! What chance
does it leave him? Answer me that."

" Darned little, if you ask me," said Mr. Evans
judicially. " Poor old George ! "

" Talks as if he were going to be married to-
morrow instead of its having come oflf five weeks
ago," pursued Uncle Martin bitterly.

THE STURDY OAK 35

Plainly there were depths of understanding in
the man, trimmer though he might be.

Mr. Evans made no reply. Irrationally he was
considering the terms " five weeks " and " married "
in relation to a spinster who would have professed
to be indignant had she known it.

" Got to pull the poor devil out," said Uncle
Martin, when in silence they had traversed fifty
feet more of the shaded side of Maple Avenue.

" How ? " demanded the again practical Mr.
Evans.

" Make him take it back ; make him recant ; swing
him over the last week before election. Make him
eat his words with every sign of exquisite relish.
Simple enough ! "

" How ? " persisted Mr. Evans.

"Wiles, tricks, subterfuges, chicanery — under-
stand what I mean ? "

" Sure ! I understand what you mean as well as
you do, but — come down to brass tacks."

" That's an entirely different matter," conceded
Uncle Martin gruffly. " It may take thought."

"Oh, is that all? Very well then; we'll think.

36 THE STURDY OAK

I, myself, will think. First, I'll have a talk with the
sodden amorist. I'll grill him. I'll find the weak
spot in his armor. There must be something we
can put over on him."

" By fair means or foul," insisted Uncle Martin
as they paused at the parting of their ways. " Low-
down, underhanded work — do you get what I
mean ? "

" I do, I do ! " declared young Mr. Evans and
broke once more into the buoyant stride of an
earlier moment. This buoyance was interrupted
but once, and briefly, ere he gained the haven of
his office.

As he stepped quite too buoyantly into Fountain
Square, he was all but run down by the new six-
cylinder roadster of Mrs. Harvey Herrington,
driven by the enthusiastic owner. He regained the
curb in time, with a ready and heartfelt utterance
nicely befitting the emergency.

The president of the Whitewater Women's Club,
the Municipal League and the SuflFrage Society,
brought her toy to a stop fifteen feet beyond her
too agile quarry, with a fine disregard for brakes

THE STURDY OAK 37

and tire surfaces. She beckoned eagerly to him
she might have slain. She was a large woman with
an air of graceful but resolute authority; a woman
good to look upon, attired with all deference to the
modes of the moment, and exhaling an agreeable
sense of good-will to all.

" Be careful always to look before you start
across and you'll never have to say such things,"
was her greeting to Mr. Evans, as he halted beside
this minor juggernaut.

" Sorry you heard it," lied the young man readily.

" Such a flexible little car — picks up before one
realizes," conceded Whitewater's acknowledged
social dictator. " But what I wanted to say is this :
that poor daft partner of yours has mortally
offended every woman in town except three, with
that silly screed of his. I've seen nearly all of them
that count this morning, or they've called me by
telephone. Now, why couldn't he have had the
advice of some good, capable woman before com-
mitting himself so rabidly?"

"Who were the three? " queried Mr. Evans.

"Oh, poor Genevieve, of course; she goes with-

38 THE STURDY OAK

out saying. And you'd guess the other two if you
knew them better — his cousin, Alys Brewster-Smith,
and poor Genevieve's Cousin Emelene. They both
have his horrible school-boy composition committed
to memory, I do believe.

" Cousin Emelene recited most of it to me with
tears in her weak eyes, and Alys tells me his noble
words have made the world seem like a different
place to her. She said she had been coming to be-
lieve that chivalry of the old true brand was dying
out, but that dear Cousin George has renewed her
faith in it.

" Think of poor Genevieve when they both fall
on his neck. They're going up for that particular
purpose this afternoon. The only two in town, mind
you, except poor Genevieve. Oh, it's too awfully
bad, because aside from this medieval view of his,
George was probably as acceptable for this office
as any man could be."

The lady burdened the word " man " with a tiny
but distinguishable emphasis. Mr. Evans chose to
ignore this.

" George's friends are going to take him in hand,"

THE STURDY OAK 39

said he. "Of course he was foolish to come out
the way he has, even if he did say only what every
man believes in his secret heart."

The president of the Whitewater Woman's Club
fixed him with a glittering and suddenly hostile eye.

" What ! you too ? " she flung at him. He caught
himself. He essayed explanations, modifications, a
better lighting of the thing. But at the expiration
of his first blundering sentence Mrs. Herrington,
with her flexible little car, was narrowly missing
an aged and careless pedestrian fifty yards down
the street.

" George come in yet ? "

For the second time Mr. Evans was demanding
this of Miss Elizabeth Sheridan who had also
ignored his preliminary "Good morning!"

Now for a moment more she typed viciously.
One would have said that the thriving legal business
of Remington and Evans required the very swift
completion of the document upon which she
wrought. And one would have been grossly de-
ceived. The sheet had been drawn into the ma-

40 THE STURDY OAK

chine at the moment Mr. Evans' buoyant step had
been heard in the outer hall, and upon it was merely
written a dozen times the bald assertion, " Now is
the time for all good men to come to the aid of
the party."

Actually it was but the mechanical explosion of
the performer's mood, rather than the wording of
a sentiment now or at any happier time entertained
by her.

At last she paused ; she sullenly permitted herself
to be interrupted. Her hands still hovered above
the already well-punished keys of the typewriter.
She glanced over a shoulder at Mr. Evans and
allowed him to observe her annoyance at the inter-
ruption.

" George has not come in yet," she said coldly.
" I don't think he will ever come in again. I don't
see how he can have the face to. I shouldn't think
he could ever show himself on the street again after
that— that "

The young woman's emotion overcame her at
this point. Again her relentless fingers stung the
blameless mechanism — " to come to the aid of the

THE STURDY OAK 41

party. Now is the time for all good — " She here
controlled herself to further speech. "And you!
Of course you applaud him for it. Oh, I knew you
were all alike ! "

" Now look here, Betty, this thing has gone far
enough "

" Far enough, -indeed! "

" But you won't give me a chance ! "

Mr. Evans here bent above his employee in a
threatening manner.

" You don't even ask what I think about it.
You say I'm guilty and ought to be shot without a
trial — not even waiting till sunrise. If you had the
least bit of fairness in your heart you'd have asked
me what I really thought about this outbreak of
George's, and I'd have told you in so many words
that I think he's made all kinds of a fool of
himself."

"No! Do you really, Pen?"

Miss Sheridan had swiftly become human. She
allowed her eyes to meet those of Mr. Evans'
with an easy gladness but little known to him of
late.

42 THE STURDY OAK

"Of course I do, Betty. The idea of a candi-
date for office in this enlightened age breaking loose
in that manner ! It's suicide. He could be arrested
for the attempt in this State. Is that strong enough
for you? You surely know how I feel now, don't
you ? Come on, Betty dear ! Let's not spar in that
foolish way any longer. Remember all I said yes-
terday. It goes double today — really, I see things
more clearly."

Plainly Miss Sheridan was disarmed.

" And I thought you'd approve every word of
his silly tirade," she murmured. Mr. Evans, still
above her, was perilously shaken by the softer note
in her voice, but he controlled himself in time and
sat in one of the chairs reserved for waiting clients.
It was near Miss Sheridan, yet beyond reaching
distance. He felt that he must be cool in this mo-
ment of impending triumph.

"Wasn't it the awfullest rot?" demanded the
spinster, pounding out a row of periods for em-
phasis.

" And he's got to be made to eat his words,"
said Mr. Evans, wisely taking the same by-path

THE STURDY OAK 43

away from the one subject in all the world that
really mattered.

"Who could make him?"

" I could, if I tried." It came in quiet, masterful
tones that almost convinced the speaker himself.

"Oh, Pen, if you could! Wouldn't that be a
victory, though? If you only could "

" Well, if I only could— and if I do? " His in-
tention was too pointed to be ignored.

" Oh, that! " He winced at the belittling " that."
"Of course I couldn't promise — anyway I don't be-
lieve you could ever do it, so what's the use of being
silly?"

" But you will — will you promise, if I do convert
George ? Answer the question, please ! " Mr.
Evans glared as only actual district attorneys have
the right to.

" Oh, what nonsense — but, well, I'll promise —
I'll promise to promise to think very seriously about
it indeed, if you bring George around."

" Betty ! " It was the voice of an able pleader
and he half arose from his chair, his arms eloquent
of purpose.

44 THE STURDY OAK

" ' Now is the time for all good men to come to

the aid of the party. Now is the time for ' "

wrote Miss Sheridan with dazzling fingers, and the
pleader resumed his seat.

" How will you bring him 'round," she then de-
manded.

"Wiles, tricks, stratagems," replied the rising
young diplomat moodily, smarting under the mo-
ment's defeat.

" Serve him right for pulling all that old-fash-
ioned nonsense," said Miss Sheridan, and accorded
her employer a glance in which admiration for his
prowess was not half concealed.

" The words of a fool wise in his own folly,"
went on the encouraged Mr. Evans, and then, alas!
a victim to the slight oratorical thrill these words
brought him, — " honestly uttering what every last
man believes and feels about woman in his heart
and yet what no sane man running for office can
say in public — here, what's the matter?"

The latter clause had been evoked by the sight
of a blazing Miss Sheridan, who now stood over
him with fists tightly clenched.

THE STURDY OAK 45

" Oh, oh, oh ! " This was low, tense, thrilling.
It expressed horror. " So that's what your convic-
tions amount to ! Then you do applaud him, every
word of him, and you were deceiving me. Every
man in his own heart, indeed. Thank heaven I
found you out in time ! "

It may be said that Mr. Evans now cowered in
his chair. The term is not too violent. He ven-
tured to lift a hand in weak protest.

" No, no, Betty, you are being unjust to me
again. I meant that that was what Martin Jaffry
told me this morning. It isn't what I believe at all.
I tell you my own deepest sentiments are exactly
what yours are in this great cause which —
which "

Painfully he became aware of his own futility.
Miss Sheridan had ceased to blaze. Seated again
before the typewriter she grinned at him with
amused incredulity.

" You nearly had me going, Pen."

Mr. Evans summoned the deeper resources of
his manhood and achieved an easier manner. He
brazenly returned her grin.

46 THE STURDY OAK

" I'll have you going again before I'm through —
remember that."

" By wiles, tricks and stratagems, I suppose."

" The same. By those I shall make poor George
recant, and by those, assuming you to be a woman
with a fine sense of honor who will hold a promise
sacred, I shall have you going. And, mark my
words, you'll be going good, too ! "

"Silly!"

She drew from the waste basket the maltreated
Sentinel J unfurled it to expose the offending matter,
and smote the column with the backs of four accus-
ing fingers.

" There, my dear, is your answer. Now run
along like a good boy."

" Silly ! " said Mr. Evans, striving for a masterly
finish to the unequal combat. He arose, dissembling
cheerful confidence, straightened the frame of a
steel-engraved Daniel Webster on the wall, and
thrice paced the length of the room, falsely ap-
pearing to be engaged in deep thought.

Miss Sheridan, apparently for mere exclamatory
purposes, now reread the fulmination of the absent

THE STURDY OAK 47

partner. She scoffed, she sneered, flouted, derided,
and one understood that she was including both
members of the firm. Then her listener became
aware that she had achieved coherence.

" Indeed, yes ! Do you know what ought to
happen to him? Every unprotected female in this
county ought to pack her trunk and trudge right up
to the Remington place and say, ' Here we are, noble
man! We have read your burning words in which
you offer to protect us. Save us from the vote!
Let your home be our sanctuary. That's what you
mean if you meant anything but tommy-rot. Here
and now we throw ourselves upon your boasted
chivalry. Where are our rooms, and what time is
luncheon served.' "

" Here ! Just say that again," called Mr. Evans
from across the room. Miss Sheridan obliged. She
elaborated her theme. George should be taken at
his word by every weak flower of womanhood. If
women were nothing but ministering angels, it
was " up to " George to give 'em a chance to
minister.

So went Miss Sheridan's improvisation and Mr.

48 THE STURDY OAK

Evans, suffering the throes of a mighty inspiration,
suddenly found it sweetest music.

When Miss Sheridan subsided, Mr. Evans ap-
peared to have forgotten the cause of their late
encounter. Whistling cheerily he bustled into his
own office, mumbling of matters that had to be
" gotten off." For some moments he busied him-
self at his desk, then emerged to dictate three busi-
ness letters to his late antagonist.

He dictated in a formal and distant manner,,
pausing in the midst of the last letter to spell out
the word " analysis," which he must have known
would enrage her further. Then, quite casually, he
wished to be told if she might know the local
habitat of Mrs. Alys Brewster-Smith and a certain
Cousin Emelene. His manner was arid.

Miss Sheridan chanced to know that the ladies
were sheltered in the exclusive boarding-house of
one Mrs. Gallup, out on Erie Street, and informed
him to this effect in the fewest possible words.
Mr. Evans whistled absently a moment, then for-
mally announced that he should be absent from the
office for perhaps an hour.

THE STURDY OAK 49

Hat, gloves and stick in hand, he was about to
nod punctiliously to the back of Miss Sheridan's
head when the door opened to admit none other
than our hero, George Remington. George wore
the look of one who is uplifted and who yet has
found occasion to be thoughtful about it. Penfield
Evans grasped his hand and shook it warmly.

" Fine, George, old boy — simply corking ! Hon-
estly, I didn't believe you had it in you. You cov-
ered the ground and you did it in a big way. It
took nerve, all right ! Of course you probably know
that every woman in town is speaking of your
young wife as ' poor Genevieve,' but you've had the
courage of your convictions. It's great ! "

" Thanks, old man ! I've spoken for the right as
I saw it, let come what may. By the way, has
Uncle Martin been in this morning, or telephoned,
or sent any word ? "

Miss Sheridan coldly signified that none of these
things had occurred, whereupon George sighed in
an interesting manner and entered his own room.

Mr. Evans had uttered his congratulations in
clear, ringing tones and Miss Sheridan, even as

50 THE STURDY OAK

she wrote, contrived with her trained shoulders to
exhibit to his Hngering eye an overwhelming con-
tempt for his opinions and his doublfe-dealing.

In spite of which he went out whistling, and
closed the door in a defiant manner.

CHAPTER III
BY FANNIE HURST

Destiny, busybody that she is, has her thousand
irons in her perpetual fires, turning, testing and
wielding them.

While Miss Betty Sheridan, for another scornful
time, was rereading the well-thumbed copy of the
Sentinel, her fine back arched like a prize cat's,
George Remington in his small mahogany office
adjoining, neck low and heels high, was codifying,
over and over again, the small planks of his plat-
form, stuffing the knot holes which afforded peeps
to the opposite side of the issue with anti-putty,
and planning a bombardment of his pattest phrases
for the complete capitulation of his Uncle Jaffry.

While Genevieve Remington in her snug library,
so eager in her wifeliness- to clamber up to her hus-
band's small planks, and if need be, spread her
prettily flounced skirts over the rotting places, was

51

52 THE STURDY OAK

memorizing, with more pride than understanding,
extracts from the controversial article for quota-
tion at the Woman's Club meeting, Mr. Penfield
Evans, with a determination which considerably ex-
panded his considerable chest measurement, ran
two at a bound up the white stone steps of Mrs.
Gallup's private boarding-house and pulled out the
white china knob of a bell that gave no evidence of
having sounded within, and left him uncertain to
ring again.

A cast-iron deer, with lichen growing along its
antlers, stood poised for instant flight in Mrs. Gal-
lup's front yard.

While Mr. Evans waited he regarded its cast-
iron flanks, but not seeingly. His rather the ex-
pression of one who stares into the future and
smiles at what he sees.

Erie Street, shaded by a double row of showy
chestnuts, lay in summer calm. A garden hose
with a patent attachment spun spray over an ad-
joining lawn and sent up a greeny smell. Out from
under the striped awning of Hassebrock's Ice Cream
Parlor, cat-a-corner, Percival Pauncefort Sheridan,

THE STURDY OAK 53

in rubber-heeled canvas shoes and white trousers,
cuffed high, emerged and turned down Huron
Street, making frequent forays into a bulging rear
pocket.

Miss Lydia Chipley, vice-president of the Busy
Bee Sewing and Civic Club, cool, starchy and un-
hatted, clicked past on slim, trim heels, all radiated
by the reflection from a pink parasol, gay embroid-
ery bag dangling.

"Hello, Lyd!"

"Hello, Pen!"

"What's your hurry?"

" It's my middle name."

" Why hurry, when the future is always wait-
ing?"

" Why aren't you holding your partner's head
since he committed political suicide in the
Sentinel? "

" I'd rather hold your head, Lyd, any day in
the week."

" Gaul," said Miss Chipley, passing on, her
sharply etched little face glowing in the pink re-
flection of the parasol, " is bounded on the north

54 THE STURDY OAK

by Mrs. Gallup's boarding-house, and on the south

by "

" By the Frigid Zone ! "

Then the door from behind swung open. Mr.
Penfield Evans stepped into Mrs. Gallup's cool, ex-
clusive parlor of better days, and delivering his
card to a moist-fingered maid, sat himself among
the shrouded furniture to await Mrs. Alys Brewster-
Smith and Miss Emelene Brand.

Mrs. Gallup's boarding-house was finishing its
noonday meal. Boiled odors lay upon a parlor that
was otherwise redolent of the more opulent days
of the Gallups. A not too ostentatious clatter of
dishes came through the closed folding-doors.

Almost immediately Mrs. Alys Brewster-Smith,
her favorite Concentrated Breath of the Lily always
in advance, rustled into the darkened parlor, her
stride hitting vigorously into her black taffeta skirts.
Even as she shook hands with Mr. Evans, she jerked
the window shade to its height, so that her smooth-
ness and coloring shone out above her weeds.

In the shadow of her and at her life job of bring-
ing up the rear, with a large Maltese cat padding

THE STURDY OAK 55

beside her, entered Miss Brand on rubber heels.
She was the color of long twilight.

Mr. Evans rose to his six-feet-in-his-stockings
and extended them each a hand, Miss EmelMie
drawing the left.

Mrs. Smith threw up a dainty gesture, black lace
ruffles falling back from arms all the whiter be-
cause of them.

"Well, Penny Evans!"

" None other, Mrs. Smith, than the villain him-
self."

" Be seated, Penfield."

" Thanks, Miss Emelene."

They drew up in a triangle beside the window
overlooking the cast-iron deer. The cat sprang up,
curhng in the crotch of Miss Emelene's arm.

" Nice ittie kittie, say how-do to big Penny-field-
Evans. Say how-do to big man. Say how-do, muv-
ver's ittie kittie." Miss Emelene extended the
somewhat reluctant Maltese paw, five hook-shaped
claws slightly in evidence.

" Say how-do to Hanna, Penfield. Hanna, say
how-do to big man."

56 THE STURDY OAK

" How-do, Hanna," said Mr. Evans, reddening
slightly beneath his tan. Then hitched his chair
closer.

" To what," he began, flashing his white smile
from one to the other of them, and with a strong
veer to the facetious, " are we indebted for the
honor of this visit ? Are those the unspoken words,
ladies?"

" Nothing wrong at home, Penfield ? Nobody
ailing or "

" No, no. Miss Emelene, never better. As a
matter of fact, it's a piece of political business that
has prompted me to "

At that Mrs. Smith jangled her bracelets, leaning
forward on her knees.

"If it's got anything to do with your partner
and my cousin George Remington having the cour-
age to go in for the district attorneyship without
the support of the vote-hunting, vote-eating women
of this town, I'm here to tell you that I'm with
him heart and soul. He can have my support
and "

" Mine too. And if I've got anything to say

THE STURDY OAK 57

my two nephews will vote for him; and I think I
have, with my two heirs."

" Ladies, it fills my heart with joy to "

" Votes ! Why what would the powder-
puffing, short-skirted, bridge-playing women of
this town do with the vote if they had it?
Wear it around their necks on a gold
chain?"

" Well spoken, Mrs. Smith, if "

" I know the direction you lean, Penfield Evans,

letting "

" But, Miss Emelene, I "

" Letting that shameless Betty Sheridan, a girl
,that had as sweet and womanly a mother as White-
water ever boasted, lead you around by the nose
on her suffrage string. A girl with her raising and
both of her grandmothers women that lived and
died genteel, to go traipsing around in her low
heels in men's offices and addressing hoi polloi from
soap boxes! Why, between her and that female
chauffeur, Mrs. Herrington, another woman whose
mother was of too fine feelings even to join the
Delsarte class, the women of this town are being

58 THE STURDY OAK

influenced to making disgraceful — dis — oh, what
shall I say, Alys ? "

Here Mrs. Smith broke in, thumping a soft fist
into a soft palm.

" It's the most pernicious movement, Mr. Evans,
that has ever got hold of this community and we
need a man like my cousin George Remington
to "

" But, Mrs. Smith, that's just what I "

" To stamp it out ! Stamp it out ! It's eating into
the homes of Whitewater, trying to make bread-
winners out of the creatures God intended for the
bread-eaters — I mean bread-bakers."

" But, Mrs. Smith, I "

" Woman's place has been the home since home
was a cave, and it will be the home so long as
women will remember that womanliness is their
greatest asset. As poor dear Mr. Smith was so
fond of saying, he — I can't bring myself to talk
of him, Mr. Evans, but — ^but as he used to say, I —
I "

' Yes, yes, Mrs. Smith, I understa "

' But as my cousin says in his article, which in

THE STURDY OAK 59

my mind should be spread broadcast, what higher
mission for woman than — than — just what are his
words, Emelene ? "

Miss Brand leaned forward, her gaze boring
into space.

" What higher mission," she quoted, as if talking
in a chapel, " for woman than that she sit enthroned
in the home, wielding her invisible but mighty
scepter from that throne, while man, kissing the
hand that so lovingly commands him, shall bear
her gifts and do her bidding. That is the strongest
vote in the world. That is the universal suffrage
which chivalry grants to woman. The unpolled
vote ! Long may it reign ! "

Round spots of color had come out on Miss
Emelene's long cheeks.

" A man who can think like that has the true —
the true — what shall I say, Alys ? "

" But, ladies, I protest that I'm not "

" Has the true chivalry of spirit, Emelene, that
the women are too stark raving mad to appreciate.
You can't come here, Mr. Evans, to two women
to whom womanliness and love of home, thank

6o THE STURDY OAK

God, are still uppermost and try to convert us
to "

Here Mr. Evans executed a triple gyration, to
the annoyance of Hanna, who withdrew from the
gesture, and raised his voice to a shout that was
not without a note of command.

" Convert you ! Why women alive, what I've
been bursting a blood vessel trying to say during
the length of this interview is that I'd as soon dip
my soul in boiling oil as try to convert you away
from the cause. My cause ! Our cause ! "

" Why "

" I'm here to tell you that I'm with my partner
head-over-heels on the plank he has taken."

" But we thought "

" We thought you and Betty Sheridan — why, my
cousin Genevieve Remington told me that "

" Yes, yes, Miss Emelene. But not even the
wiles of a pretty woman can hold out indefinitely
against Truth! A broad-minded man has got to
keep the door of his mind open to conviction, or it
decays of mildew. I confess that finally I am con-
vinced that if there is one platform more than an-

THE STURDY OAK 6i

other upon which George Remington deserves his
election it is on the brave and chivalrous prin-
ciples he has so courageously come out with in the
current Sentinel. Whatever may have been be-
tween Betty Sheridan and "

" Mr. Evans, you don't mean to tell me that you
and Betty Sheridan have quarreled! Such a de-
sirable match from every point of view, family and
all! It goes to show what a rattle-pated bunch of
women they are ! Any really clever girl with an
eye to her future, anti or pro, could shift her politics
when it came to a question of matri "

" Mrs. Smith, there comes a time in every mod-
ern man's life when he's got to keep his politics
and his pretty girls separate, or suffrage will get
him if he don't watch out ! "

" Yes, and Mr. Evans, if what I hear is true, a
good-looking woman can talk you out of your safety
deposit key ! "

" That's where you're wrong, Mrs. Smith, and
I'll prove it to you. Despite any wavering I may
have exhibited, I now stand, as George puts it in
his article, ' ready to conserve the threatened flower

62 THE STURDY OAK

of womanhood by also endeavoring to conserve her
unpolled vote!' If you women want prohibition,
it is in your power to sway man's vote to prohibi-
tion. If you women want the moon, let man cast
your proxy vote for it! In my mind, that is the
true chivalry. To quote again, ' Woman is man's
rarest heritage, his beautiful responsibility, and at
all times his co-operation, support and protection
are due her. His support and protection.' "

Miss Emelene closed her eyes. The red had
spread in her cheeks and she laid her head back
against the chair, rocking softly and stroking the
thick-napped cat.

" The flower of womanhood," she repeated.
" ' His support and his protection.' If ever a
man deserved high office because of high principles,
it's my cousin George Remington! My cousin
Genevieve Livingston Remington is the luckiest girl
in the world, and not one of us Brands but what
is willing to admit it. My two nephews, too, if their
Aunt Emelene has anything to say, and I think she
has "

" Why, there isn't a stone in the world I wouldn't

THE STURDY OAK 63

turn to see that boy in office," Mrs. Smith inter-
rupted.

At that Mr. Evans rose.

" You mean that, Mrs. Smith ? "

Miss Emelene rose with him, the cat pouring
from her lap.

" Of course she means it, Penfield. What self-
respecting woman wouldn't ! "

Mr. Evans sat down again suddenly. Miss
Emelene with him, and leaning violently forward,
thrust his eager, sun-tanned face between the two
women.

" Well, then, ladies, here's your chance to prove
it! That's what brings me today. As two of the
self-respecting, idealistic and womanly women of
this community, I have come to urge you both
to "

"Oh, Mr. Evans!"

" Penfield, you are the flatterer ! "

" To induce two such representative women as
yourselves to help my partner to the election he so
well deserves."

"Us?"

64 THE STURDY OAK

" It is in your power, ladies, to demonstrate to
Whitewater that George Remington's chivalry is not
only on paper, but in his soul."

"But— how?"

" By throwing yourselves upon his generosity and
hospitality, at least during the campaign. You have
it in your power, ladies, to strengthen the only un-
certain plank upon which George Remington stands
today."

A clock ticked roundly into a silence tinged with
eloquence. The Maltese leaped back into Miss
Emelene's lap, purring there.

" You mean, Penfield, for us to go visit George —
er— er "

" Just that ! Bag and baggage. As two relatives
and two unattached women, it is your privilege,
nay, your right."

" But "

" He hasn't come out in words with it, but he
has intimated that such an act from the representa-
tive antis of this town would more than anything
strengthen his theories into facts. As unattached
women, particularly as women of his own family,

THE STURDY OAK 65

his support and protection, as he puts it, are due
you, due you! "

Mrs. Smith clasped her plentifully ringed fingers,
and regarded him with her prominent eyes widen-
ing.

" Why, I — unprotected widow that I am, Mr.
Evans, am not the one to force myself even upon
my cousin if "

" Nor I, Penfield. It would be a pleasant enough
change, heaven knows, from the boarding-house.
But you can ask your mother, Penfield, if there
ever was a prouder girl in all Whitewater than
Emmy Brand. I "

" But I tell you, ladies, the obligation is all on
George's part. It's just as if you were polling votes
for him. What is probably the oldest adage in the
language, states that actions speak louder than
words. Give him his chance to spread broadcast
to your sex his protection, his support. That, ladies,
is all I — we — ask."

" But I — Genevieve — the housekeeping, Penfield.
Genevieve isn't much on management when it comes
to "

66 THE STURDY OAK

"Housekeeping! Why, I have it from your fair
cousin herself, Miss Emelene, that her idea of
their new little home is the Open House."

" Yes, but — as Emelene says, Mr. Evans, it's
an imposition to "

" Why do you think, Mrs. Smith, Martin Jaffry
spends all his evenings up at Remingtons' since
they're back from their honeymoon ? Why, he was
telling me only last night it's for the joy of seeing
that new little niece of his lording it over her well-
oiled little household, where a few extra dropping
in makes not one whit of difference."

At this remark, embedded like a diamond in a
rock, a shade of faintest color swam across Mrs.
Smith's face and she swung him her profile and
twirled at her rings.

" And where Genevieve Remington's husband's
interests are involved, ladies, need I go further
in emphasizing your welcome into that little
home?"

"Heaven knows it would be a change from the
boarding-house, Alys. The lunches here are be-
ginning to go right against me ! That sago pudding

THE STURDY OAK 67

today — and Gallup knowing how I hate starchy-
desserts ! "

" For the sake of the cause, Miss Emelene,
too ! "

" Gallup would have to hold our rooms at half
rate."

" Of course, Mrs. Smith. I'll arrange all
that."

" I — I can't go over until evening, with three
trunks to pack."

" Just fine, Mrs. Smith. You'll be there just in
time to greet George at dinner."

Miss Emelene fell to stroking the cat, again
curled like a sardelle in her lap.

" Kitti-kitti-kitti — , does muvver's ittsie Hanna
want to go on visit to Tousin George in fine new
ittie house ? To fine Tousin Georgie what give ittsie
Hanna big saucer milk ewy day? Big fine George
what like ladies and lady kitties ! "

" Emelene, it's out of the question to take
Hanna. You know how George Remington hates
cats ! You remember at the Sunday School Bazaar
when "

68 THE STURDY OAK

A grimness descended like a mask over Miss
Brand's features. Her mouth thinned.

" Very well, then. Without Hanna you can count
me out, Penfield. If "

" No, no ! Why nonsense, Miss Emelene !
George doesn't "

" This cat has the feelings and sensibilities of a
human being."

" Why of course," cried Penfield Evans, reach-
ing for his hat. " Just you bring Hanna right
along. Miss Emelene. That's only a pet pose of
George's when he wants to tease his relatives, Mrs.
Smith. I remember from college — why I've seen
George kiss a cat ! "

Miss Emelene huddled the object of contro-
versy up in her chin, talking down into the warm
gray fur.

" Was 'em tryin' to 'buse muvver's ittsie bittsie
kittsie ? Muvver's ittsie bittsie kittsie ! "

They were in the front hall now, Mr. Evans tug-
ging at the door.

" I'll run around now and arrange to have your
trunks called for at five. My congratulations and

THE STURDY OAK 69

thanks, ladies, for helping the right man toward
the right cause."

" You're sure, Penfield, we'll be welcome ? "

" Welcome as the sun that shines ! "

" If I thought, Penfield, that Hanna wouldn't be
welcome I wouldn't budge a step."

" Of course she's welcome. Miss Emelene.
Isn't she of the gentler sex? There'll be a cab
around for you and Mrs. Smith and Hanna about
five. So long, Mrs. Smith, and many thanks. Miss
Emelene, Hanna."

On the outer steps they stood for a moment in
a dapple of sunshine and shadow from chestnut
trees.

" Good-by, Mr. Evans, until evening."

" Good-by, Mrs. Smith." He paused on the
walk, lifting his hat and flashing his smile a third
time.

" Good-by, Miss Emelene."

From the steps Miss Brand executed a rotary
motion with the left paw of the dangling Maltese.

" Tell nice gentleman by-by. Turn now, Hanna,
get washed and new ribbon to go by-by. Her go

70 THE STURDY OAK

to big Cousin George and piddy Cousin Genevieve.
By-by! By-by!"

The door swung shut, enclosing them. Down
the quiet, tree-shaped sidewalk, Mr. Penfield Evans
strode into the somnolent afternoon, turning down
Huron Street. At the remote end of the block and
before her large frame mansion of a thousand
angles and wooden lace work, Mrs. Harvey Her-
rington's low car sidled to her curb-stone, racy-
looking as a hound. That lady herself, large and
modish, was in the act of stepping up and in.

" Well, Pen Evans ! 'Tis writ in the book our
paths should cross."

" Who more pleased than I ? "

" Which way are you bound ? "

" Jenkins' Transfer and Cab Service."

" Jump in."

" No sooner said than done."

Mrs. Herrington threw her clutch and let out a
cough of steam. They jerked and leaped forward.
From the rear of the car an orange and black pen-
nant — Votes for Women — stiffened out like a sema-
phore against the breeze.

CHAPTER IV
BY DOROTHY CANFIELD

Genevieve Remington sat in her pretty draw-
ing-room and watched the hour hand of the clock
slowly approach five. Five was a sacred hour in
her day. At five George left his office, turned off
the business-current with a click and turned on, full-
voltage, the domestic-affectionate.

Genevieve often told her girl friends that she
only began really to live after five, when George
was restored to her. She assured them the psy-
chical connection between George and herself was so
close that, sitting alone in her drawing-room, she
could feel a tingling thrill all over when the clock
struck five and George emerged from his office
downtown.

On the afternoon in question she received her
five o'clock electric thrill promptly on time, although

71

72 THE STURDY OAK

history does not record whether or not George
walked out from his office at that moment. With
all due respect for the world-shaking importance
of Mr. Remington's movements, it must be stated
that history had, on that afternoon, other more im-
portant events to chronicle.

As the clock struck five, the front doorbell rang.
Marie, the maid, went to open the door. Genevieve
adjusted the down-sweeping, golden-brown tress
over her right eye, brushed an invisible speck from
the piano, straightened a rose in a vase, and after
these traditionally bridal preparations, waited with
a bride's optimistic smile the advent of a caller.
But it was Marie who appeared at the door, with
a stricken face of horror.

" Mrs. Remington ! Mrs. Remington ! " she
whispered loudly. " They've come to stay. The
men are getting their trunks down from the
wagon."

" Who has come to stay? Where? " queried the
startled bride.

" The two ladies who came to call yesterday! "

" Oh! " said the relieved Genevieve. " There's

THE STURDY OAK 73

some mistake, of course. If it's Cousin Emelene
and Mrs. "

She advanced into the hall and was confronted
by two burly men with a very large trunk between
them.

" Which room ? " said one of them in a bored
and insolent voice.

" Oh, you must have come to the wrong house,"
Genevieve assured them with her pretty, friendly
smile.

She was so happy and so convinced of the essen-
tial rightness of a world which had produced George
Remington that she had a friendly smile for every
one, even for unshaven men who kept their battered
derby hats on their heads, had viciously smelling
cigars in their mouths, and penetrated to her sacred
front hall with trunks which belonged somewhere
else.

" Isn't this G. L. Remington's house ? " inquired
one of the men, dropping his end of the trunk and
consulting a dirty slip of paper.

" Yes, it is," admitted Genevieve, thrilHng at the
thought that it was also hers.

74 THE STURDY OAK

" This is the place all right, then," said the man.
He heaved up his end of the trunk again, and said
once more, " Which room ? "

The repetition fell a little ominously on Gene-
vieve's ear. What on earth could be the matter?
She heard voices outside and craning her soft white
neck, she saw Cousin Emelene, with her gray
kitten under one arm and a large suitcase in her
other hand, coming up the steps. There was a
beatific expression in her gentle, faded eyes, and
her lips were quivering uncertainly. When she
caught sight of Genevieve's sweet face back of the
bored expressmen, she gave a little cry, ran for-
ward, set down her suitcase and clasped her young
cousin in her arms.

" Oh Genevieve dear, that noble wonderful hus-
band of yours! What have you done to deserve
such a man . . . out of this Age of Gold ! "

This was a sentiment after Genevieve's own heart,
but she found it rather too vague to meet the present
somewhat tense situation.

Cousin Emelene went on, clasping her at inter-
vals, and talking very fast.

THE STURDY OAK 75

" I can hardly believe it ! Now that my time of
trial is all over I don't mind telling you that I was
growing embittered and cynical. All those phrases
my dear mother had brought me to believe, the
sanctity of the home, the chivalrous protection of
men, the wicked folly of women who leave the
home to engage in fierce industrial struggle." . . .
At about this point the expressmen set the trunk
down, put their hands on their hips, cocked their
hats at a new angle and waited in gloomy ennui
for the conversation to stop. Cousin Emelene
flowed on, her voice unsteady with a very real
emotion.

" See, dear, you must not blame me for my lack of
faith . . . but see how it looked to me. There I
was, as womanly a woman as ever breathed, and
yet / had no home to be sanctified, / had never had
a bit of chivalrous protection from any man. And
with the New Haven stocks shrinking from one
day to the next, the way they do, it looked as
though I would either have to starve or engage
in the wicked, unwomanly folly of earning my
own living.

76 THE STURDY OAK

" Do you know, dear Genevieve, I had almost
come to the point — you know how the suffragists
do keep banging away at their points — I almost
wondered if perhaps they were right and if men
really mean those things about protection and sup-
port in place of the vote. . . . And then George's
splendid, noble-spirited article appeared, and a kind
friend interpreted it for me and told what it really
meant, for me! Oh, Genevieve." . . . The tears
rose to her mild eyes, her gentle, flat voice faltered,
she took out a handkerchief hastily. " It seemed
too good to be true," she said brokenly into its
folds. " I've longed all my life to be protected, and
now I'm going to be ! "

" Which room, please ? " said the expressman.
" We gotta be goin' on."

Genevieve pinched herself hard, jumped and said
" ouch." Yes, she was awake, all right !

" Oh, Marie, will you please get Hanna a saucer
of milk ? " said Cousin Emelene now, seeing the
maid's round eyes glaring startled from the dining-
room door. " And just warm it a little bit, don't
scald it. She won't touch it if there's the least bit

THE STURDY OAK 77

of a scum on it. Just take that ice-box chill off.
Here, I'll go with you this time. Since we're going
to live here now, you'll have to do it a good many
times, and I'd better show you just how to do it
right."

She disappeared, leaving a trail of caressing
baby-talk to the effect that she would take good care
of muvver's ittie bittie kittie.

She left Genevieve for all practical purposes
turned to stone. She felt as though she were stone,
from head to foot, and she could open her mouth
no more than any statue when, in answer to the
next repetition, very peremptory now, of " Which
room? " a voice as peremptory called from the open
front door, " Straight upstairs ; turn to your right,
first door on the left."

As the men started forward, banging the mahog-
any banisters with the corners of the trunk at every
step, Mrs. Brewster-Sraith stepped in, immaculate
as to sheer collar and cuffs, crisp and tailored as to
suit, waved and netted as to hair, and chilled steel
and diamond point as to will-power.

" Oh, Genevieve, I didn't see you there! I didii't

78 THE STURDY OAK

know why they stood there waiting so long. I know
the 'house so well I knew of course which room
you'll have for guests. Dear old house ! It will be
like returning to my childhood to live here again ! "
She cocked an ear toward the upper regions and
frowned, but went on smoothly.

" Such happy girlhood hours as I have passed
here! After all there is nothing like the home
feeling, is there, for us women at any rate ! We're
the natural conservatives, who cling to the simple,
elemental satisfactions, and there's a heart-hunger
that can only be satisfied by a home and a man's
protection! I thought George's description too
beautiful ... in his article you know ... of
the ideal home with the women of the family safe
within its walls, protected from the savagery of the
economic struggle which only men in their strength
can bear without being crushed."

She turned quickly and terribly to the express-
men coming down the stairs and said in so fierce
a voice that they shrank back visibly, " There's an-
other trunk to take up to the room next to that.
And if you let it down with the bang you did this

THE STURDY OAK 79

one, you'll get something that will surprise you!
Do you hear me! "

They shrank out, cowed and tiptoeing. Mrs.
Brewster-Smith turned back to her young cousin-
by-marriage and murmured, " That was such a true
and deep saying of George's . . . wherever does
such a young man get his wisdom! . . . that
women are not fitted by nature to cope with hostile
forces ! "

Cousin Emelene approached from behind the
statue of Genevieve, still frozen in place with an
expression of stupefaction on her white face. The
older woman put her arms around the bride's neck
and gave her an affectionate hug.

" Oh, dearest Jinny, doesn't it seem like a
dream that we're all going to be together, all we
women, in a real home, with a real man at the head
of it to direct us and give us of his strength!
It does seem just like that beautiful old-fashioned
home that George drew such an exquisite picture
of, in his article, where the home was the center
of the world to the women in it. It will be to me,
I assure you, dear. I feel as though I had come

8o THE STURDY OAK

to a haven, and as though I never would want to
leave it ! "

The expressmen were carrying up another trunk
now, and so conscious of the glittering eyes of
mastery upon them that they carried it as though it
were the Ark of the Covenant and they its chosen
priests. Mrs. Brewster-Smith followed them with
a firm tread, throwing over her shoulder to the
stone Genevieve below, " Oh, my dear, little Eleanor
and her nurse will be in soon. Frieda was taking
Eleanor for her usual afternoon walk. Will you
just send them upstairs when they come! I sup-
pose Frieda will have the room in the third story,
that extra room that was finished off when Uncle
Henry lived here. Emelene, you'd better come
right up, too, if you expect to get unpacked before
dinner."

She disappeared, and Emelene fluttered up
after her, drawn along by suction, apparently, like
a sheet of paper in the wake of a train. The ex-
pressmen came downstairs, still treading softly,
and went out. Genevieve was alone again in her
front hall.

THE STURDY OAK 8i

To her came tiptoeing Marie, with wide eyes of
query and alarm. And from Marie's questioning
face, Genevie-ve fled away Hke one fleeing from the
plague.

" Don't ask me, Marie ! Don't speak to me.
Don't you dare ask me what ... or I'll ..."
She was at the front door as she spoke, poised for
flight like a terrified doe. " I must see Mr. Rem-
ington! I don't know what to tell you, Marie, till
I have seen Mr. Remington! I must see my hus-
band! I don't know what to say, I don't know
what to think, until I have seen my husband."

Calling this eminently wifely sentiment over her
shoulder she ran down the front walk, hatless,
wrapless, just as she was in her pretty flowered
and looped-up bride's house dress. She couldn't
have run faster if the house had been on fire.

The clicking of her high heels on the concrete
sidewalk was a rattling tattoo so eloquent of dis-
organized panic that more than one head was thrust
from a neighboring window to investigate, and
more than one head was pulled back, nodding to
the well-worn and charitable hypothesis, " Their

82 THE STURDY OAK

first quarrel." The hypothesis would instantly have
been withdrawn if any one had continued looking
after the fleeing bride long enough to see her, re-
gardless of passers-by, fling herself wildly into her
husband's arms as he descended from the trolley-
car at the corner.

Betty Sheridan was sitting in the drawing-room
of her parents' house, rather moodily reading a
book on the Balance of Trade.

She had an unconfessed weakness of mind on the
subject of tariffs and international trade. Although
when in college she had written a paper on it which
had been read aloud in the Economics Seminar and
favorably commented upon, she knew, in her heart
of hearts, that she understood less than nothing
about the underlying principles of the subject. This
nettled her and gave her occasional nightmare mo-
ments of doubt as to the real fitness of women for
public affairs. She read feverishly all she could
find on the subject, ending by addling her brains
to the point of frenzy.

She was almost in that condition now although

THE STURDY OAK 83

she did not look it in the least as, dressed for dinner
in the evening gown which replaced the stark linens
and tailored seams of her office-costume, she bent
her shining head and earnest face over the pages of
the book.

Penfield Evans took a long look at her, as one
looks at a rose-bush in bloom, before he spoke
through the open door and broke the spell.

" Oh, Betty," he called in a low tone, beckoning
her with a gesture redolent of mystery.

Betty laid down her book and stared. " What
you want ? " she challenged him, reverting to the
phrase she had used when they were children to-
gether.

"Come on out here a minute! " he said, jerking
his head over his shoulder. " I want to show you
something."

" Oh, I can't fuss around with you," said Betty,
turning to her book again. " I've got Roberts'
Balance of Trade out of the library and I must
finish it by tomorrow." She began to read
again.

The young man stood silent for a moment.

84 THE STURDY OAK

" Great Scott! " he was saying to himself with a
sinking heart. " So that's what they pick up for
light reading, when they're waiting for dinner ! "

He had a particularly gone feeling because,,
although he had made several successful political
speeches on international trade and foreign tariffs,
he was intelligent enough to know in his heart of
hearts that he had no real understanding of the
principles involved. He had come, indeed, to doubt
if any one had !

Now, as he watched the pretty sleek head bent
over the book he had supposed of course was a
novel, he felt a qualm of real apprehension. Maybe
there was something in what that guy said, the
one who wrote a book to prove (bringing Queen
Elizabeth and Catherine the Great as examples)
that the real genius of women is for political life.
Maybe they have a special gift for it! Maybe, a
generation or so from now, it'll be the men who are
disfranchised for incompetence. . . . He put
away as fantastic such horrifying ideas, and with
a quick action of his resolute will applied himself
to the present situation.

THE STURDY OAK 85

" Oh Betty, you don't know what you're missing !
It's a sight you'll never forget as long as you
live ... oh, come on! Be a sport. Take a
chance ! "

Betty was still suspicious of frivolity, but she
rose, looked at her wrist-watch and guessed she'd
have a few minutes before dinner, to fool away in
light-minded society.

" There's nothing light-minded about this ! "
Penny assured her gravely, leading her swiftly down
the street, around the corner, up another street and
finally, motioning her to silence, up on the well-
clipped lawn of a handsome, dignified residence, set
around with old trees.

" Look ! " he whispered in her ear, dramatically
pointing in through the lighted window. "Look!
What do you see? "

Betty looked, and looked again and turned on
him petulantly:

" What foolishness are you up to now, Penfield
Evans ! " she whispered energetically. " Why under
the sun did you drag me out to see Emelene and
Alys Brewster-Smith dining with the Remingtons?

86 THE STURDY OAK

Isn't it just the combination of reactionary old
fogies you might expect to get together . . .
though I didn't know Alys ever took her little girl
out to dinner-parties, and Emelene must be per-
fectly crazy over that cat to take her here. Cats
make George's flesh creep. Don't you remember,
at the Sunday School Bazaar."

He cut her short with a gesture of command, and
applying his lips to her ear so that he would not
be heard inside the house, he said, " You think all
you see is Emelene and Alys taking dinner en
famille with the Remingtons. Eyes that see not!
What you are gazing upon is a reconstruction of
the blessed family life that existed in the good old
days, before the industrial period and the abominable
practice of economic independence for women be-
gan! You are seeing Woman in her proper place,
the Home, ... if not her own Home, some-
body's Home, anybody's Home . . . the Home
of the man nearest to her, who owes her protection
because she can't vote. You are gazing upon ..."

His rounded periods were silenced by a tight
clutch on his wrist.

THE STURDY OAK 87

" Penfield Evans. Don't you dare exaggerate
to me! Have they come there to stay! To take
him at his word! "

He nodded solemnly.

" Their trunks are upstairs in the only two spare-
rooms in the house, and Frieda is installed in the
only extra room in the attic. Marie gave notice
that she was going to quit, just before dinner.
George has been telephoning to my Aunt Harriet to
see if she knows of another maid. ..."

" Whatever . . . whatever could have made
them think of such a thing ! " gasped Betty, almost
beyond words.

" I did ! " said Penfield Evans, tapping himself
on the chest. " It was my giant intelligence that
propelled them here."

He was conscious of a lacy rush upon him, and
of a couple of soft arms which gave him an im-
passioned embrace none the less vigorous because
the arms were more used to tennis-racquets and
canoe-paddles than impassioned embraces. Then
he was thrust back . . . and there was Betty, col-
lapsed against a lilac bush, shaking and convulsed.

88 THE STURDY OAK

one hand pressed hard on her mouth to keep back
the shrieks of merriment which continually escaped
in suppressed squeals, the other hand outstretched
to ward him off. . . .

" No, don't you touch me, I -didn't mean a thing
by it! I just couldn't help it! It's too, too rich!
Oh Penny, you duck ! Oh, I shall die ! I shall die !
I never saw anything so funny in my life! Oh,
Penny, take me away or I shall perish here and
now ! "

On the whole, in spite of the repulsing hand, he
took it that he had advanced his cause. He broke
into a laugh, more light-hearted than he had uttered
for a long time. They stood for a moment more
in the soft darkness, gazing in with rapt eyes at the
family scene. Then they reeled away up the street,
gasping and choking with mirth, festooning them-
selves about trees for support when their legs gave
way under them.

" Did you see George's face when Eme-
lene let the cat eat out of her plate ! " cried
Betty.

" And did you see Genevieve's when Mrs.

THE STURDY OAK 89

Brewster-Smith had the dessert set down in front
of her to serve ! "

" How about Httle Eleanor upsetting the glass
of milk on George's trousers ! "

" Oh poor old George ! Did you ever see such
gloom ! "

Thus bubbling, they came again to Betty's home
with the door still open from which she had lately
emerged. There Betty fell suddenly silent, all the
laughter gone from her face. The man peered
in the dusk, apprehensive. What had gone wrong,
now, after all?

" Do you know, Penny, we're pigs ! " she said
suddenly, with energy. " We're hateful, abomi-
nable pigs! "

He glared at her and clutched his hair.

"Didn't you see Emelene Brand's face? I
can't get it out of my mind! It makes me sick,
it was so happy and peaceful and befooled! Poor
old dear ! She believes all that ! And she's the
only one who does ! And its beastly in us to make
a joke of it! She has wanted a home all her life,
and she'd have made a lovely one, too, for children !

go THE STURDY OAK

And she's been kept from it by all this fool's talk
about womanliness."

" Help ! What under the sun are you ..."
began Penfield.

"Why, look here, she's not and never was, the
kind any man wants to marry. She wouldn't have
liked a real husband, either . . . poor, dear, thin-
blooded old child! But she wanted a home just
the same. Everybody does! And if she had been
taught how to earn a decent living, if she hadn't
been fooled out of her five senses by that idiotic
cant about a man's doing everything for you, or else
going without . . , why she'd be working now,
a happy, useful woman, bringing up two or three
adopted children in a decent home she'd made for
them with her own efforts . . . instead of making
her loving heart ridiculous over a cat. ..."

She dashed her hand over her eyes angrily, and
stood silent for a moment, trying to control
her quivering chin before she went into the
house.

The young man touched her shoulder with rev-
erent fingers.

THE STURDY OAK 91

" Betty," he said in a rather unsteady voice, " its
true, all that bally-rot about women being better
than men. You are! "

With which very modem comphment, he turned
and left her.

CHAPTER V
BY KATHLEEN NORRIS

Her first evening with her augmented family
Genevieve Remington never forgot. It is not at all
likely that George ever forgot it, either; but to
George it was only one in the series of disturbing
events that followed his unqualified repudiation of
the suffrage cause.

To Genevieve's tender heart it meant the wreck-
age, not the preservation of the home; that lovely
home to whose occupancy she had so hopefully
looked. She was too young a wife to recognize in
herself the evanescent emotions of the bride. The
blight had fallen upon her for all time. What had
been fire was ashes; it was all over. The roseate
dream had been followed by a cruel, and a lasting,
awakening.

Some day Genevieve would laugh at the memory
of this tragic evening, as she laughed at George's

92

THE STURDY OAK 93

stern ultimatums, and at Junior's decision to be an
engineer, and at Jinny's tiny cut thumb. But she
had no sense of humor now. As she ran to the
corner, and poured the whole distressful story into
her husband's ears, she felt the walls of her castle
in Spain crashing about her ears.

George, of course, was wonderful; he had been
that all his life. He only smiled, at first, at her
news.

" You poor little sweetheart ! " he said to his
wife, as she clung to his arm, and they entered the
house together. " It's a shame to distress you so,
just as we are getting settled, and Marie and Lottie
are working in! But it's too absurd, and to have
you worry your Httle head is ridiculous, of course !
Let them stay here to dinner, and then I'll just
quietly take it for granted that they are going
home- "

" But — but their trunks are here, dearest ! "

Husband and wife were in their own room now,
and Genevieve was rapidly recovering her calm.
George turned from his mirror to frown at her in
surprise.

94 THE STURDY OAK

" Their trunks ! They didn't lose any time, did
they? But do you mean to say there was no tele-
phoning — no notice at all ? "

" They may have telephoned, George, love. But
I was over at Grace Hatfield's for a while, and I
got back just before they came in ! "

George went on with his dressing, a thoughtful
expression on his face. Genevieve thought he looked
stunning in the loose Oriental robe he wore while
he shaved.

" Well, whatever they think, we can't have this,
you know," he said presently. " I'll have to be
quite frank with Alys, — of course Emelene has
no sense ! "

" Yes, be quite frank ! " Genevieve urged eagerly.
" Tell them that of course you were only speaking
figuratively. Nobody ever means that a woman
really can't get along without a man's protection,
because look at the women who do "

She stopped, a little troubled by the expression
on his face.

" I said what I truly believe, dear," he said
kindly. " You know that ! "

THE STURDY OAK 95

Genevieve was silent. Her heart beat furiously,
and she felt that she was going to cry. He was
angry with her — he was angry with her ! Oh, what
had she said, what had she said!

" But for all that," George continued, after a
moment, " nobody but two women could have put
such an idiotic construction upon my words. I am
certainly going to make that point with Alys. A
sex that can jump headlong to such a perfectly un-
tenable conclusion is very far from ready to assume
the responsibilities of citizenship "

" George, dearest ! " faltered Genevieve. She did
not want to make him cross again, but she could
not in all loyalty leave him under this misunder-
standing, to approach the always articulate Alys.

" George, it was Penny, I'm sure ! " she said.
" From what they said, — they talked all the time !
— I think Penny went to see them, and sort of —
sort of — suggested this ! I'm so sorry, George "

George was sulphurously silent. .

" And Penny will make the most of it, you
know!"

Genevieve went on quickly and nervously. " If

96 THE STURDY OAK

you should send them back, tonight, I know he'd
tell Betty! And Betty says she is coming to see
you because she has been asked to read an answer
to your paper, at the Club, and she might — she has
such a queer sense of humor "

Silence. Genevieve wished that she was dead,
and that every one was dead.

" I don't want to criticize you, dear," George said
presently, in his kindest tone. " But the time to actj
of course, was when they first arrived. I can't do
anything now. We'll just have to face it through,
for a few days."

It was not much of a cloud, but it was their first.
Genevieve went downstairs with tears in her eyes.

She had wanted their home to be so cozy, so
dainty, so intimate! And now to have two grown
women and a child thrust into her Paradise ! Marie
was sulky, rattling the silver-drawer viciously while
her mistress talked to her, and Lottie had an ugly
smile as she submitted respectfully that there wasn't
enough asparagus.

Then George's remoteness was terrifying. He
carved with appalling courtesy.

THE STURDY OAK 97

" Is there another chicken, Genevieve ? " he asked,
as if he had only an impersonal interest in her
kitchen. No, there was only the one. And plenty,
too, said the guests pleasantly. Genevieve hoped
there were eggs and bacon for Marie and Lottie
and Frieda.

" I'm going to ask you for just a mouthful more,
it tastes so delicious and homy ! " said Alys. " And
then I want to talk a little business, George. It's
about those houses of mine, out in Kentwood. ..."

George looked at her blankly, over his drum-
stick.

" Darling Tom left them," said Tom's widow,
" and they really have rented well. They're right
near the factory, you know. But now, just lately,
some man from the agents has been writing and
writing me ; he says that one of them has been con-
demned, and that unless I do something or other
they'll all be condemned. It's a horrid neighbor-
hood, and I don't like the idea, anyway, of a woman
poking about among drains and cellars. Yet, if I
send the agent, he'll run me into fearful expense;
they always do. So I'm going to take them out of

98 THE STURDY OAK

his hands tomorrow, and turn it all over to you,
and whatever you decide will be best ! "

" My dear girl, I'm the busiest man in the world! "
George said. " Leave all that to Allen. He's the
best agent in town ! "

" Oh, I took them away from Allen months ago,
George. Sampson has them now."

" Sampson ? What the deuce did you change for ?
I don't know that Sampson is solvent. I certainly
would go back to Allen "

"George, I can't!"

The widow looked at her plate, swept him a
coquettish glance, and dropped her eyes again.

" Mr. Allen is a dear fellow," she elucidated,
"but his wife is dreadful! There's nothing she
won't suspect, and nothing she won't say ! "

" My dear cousin, this isn't a question of social
values ! It's business ! " George said impatiently.
"But I'll tell you what to do," he added, after
scowling thought. "You put it in Miss Eliot's
hands; she was with Allen for some years. Now
she's gone in for herself, and she's doing well.
We've given her several things "

THE STURDY OAK 99

" Take it out of a man's hands to put it into a
woman's ! " Alys exclaimed. And Emelene added
softly :

" What can a woman be thinking of, to go into
a dreadful business like selling real estate and col-
lecting rents ! "

" Of course, she was trained by men ! " Genevieve
threw in, a little anxiously. Alys was so tactless,
when George was tired and hungry. She cast about
desperately for some neutral topic, but before she
could find one the widow spoke again.

"I'll tell you what I'll do, George. I'll bring
the books and papers to your office tomorrow morn-
ing, and then you can do whatever you think best!
Just send me a check every month, and it will be
all right!"

"Just gather me up what's there, on the plate,"
Emelene said, with her nervous little laugh in the
silence. " I declare I don't know when I've eaten
such a dinner ! But that reminds me that you could
help me out wonderfully, too, Cousin George — I
can't quite call you Mr. Remington! — with those
wretched stocks of mine.

lOO THE STURDY OAK

" I'm sure I don't know what they've been doing,
but I know I get less money all the time ! It's the
New Haven, George, that P'pa left me two years
ago. I can't understand anything about it, but yes-
terday I was talking to a young man who advised
me to put all my money into some tonic stock.
It's a tonic made just of plain earth — he says it
makes everything grow. Doesn't it sound reason-
able? But if I should lose all I have, I'm afraid
I'd really wear my welcome out, Genevieve, dear.
So perhaps you'll advise me ? "

"I'll do what I can ! " George smiled, and Gene-
vieve's heart rose. " But upon my word, what you
both tell me isn't a strong argument for Betty's
cause ! " he added good-naturedly.

" P'pa always said," Emelene quoted, " that if
a woman looked about for a man to advise her,
she'd find him! And as I sit here now, in this
lovely home, I think — isn't it sweeter and wiser
and better this way? For a while, — because I was
a hot-headed, rebellious girl ! — I couldn't see that he
was right. I had had a disappointment, you know,"
she went on, her kind, mild eyes watering. Gene-

THE STURDY OAK loi

vieve, who had been gazing in some astonishment
at the once hot-headed, rebellious girl, sighed sym-
pathetically. Every one knew about the Reverend
Mr. Tetter's death.

" And after that I just wanted to be busy," con-
tinued Emelene. " I wanted to be a trained nurse,
or a matron, or something ! I look back at it now,
and wonder what I was thinking about! And then
dear Mama went, and I stepped into her place with
P'pa. He wasn't exactly an invalid, but he did like
to be fussed over, to have his meals cooked by my
own hands, even if we were in a hotel. And whist
— dear me, how I used to dread those three rub-
bers every evening! I was only a young woman
then, and I suppose I was attractive to other men,
but I never forgot Mr. Totter. And Cousin
George," she turned to him submissively, " when
you were talking about a woman's real sphere, I
felt — well, almost guilty. Because only that one
man ever asked me. Do you think, feeling as I did,
that I should have deliberately made myself attrac-
tive to men? "

George cleared his throat.

I02 THE STURDY OAK

" All women can't marry, I suppose. It's in
England, I believe, that there are a million unmar-
ried women. But you have made a contented and
a womanly life for yourself, and, as a matter of
fact, there always has been a man to stand between
you and the struggle ! " he said.

" I know. First P'pa, and now you ! " Emelene
mused happily.

" I wasn't thinking of myself. I was thinking
that your father left you a comfortable income ! "
he said quickly.

" And now you have asked me here ; one of the
dearest old places in town!" Emelene added in-
nocently.

Genevieve listened in a stupefaction. This was
married life, then? Not since her childhood had
Genevieve so longed to stamp, to scream, to pro-
test, to tear this twisted scheme apart and start
anew!

She was not a crying woman, but she wanted to
cry now. She was not — she told herself indig-
nantly — quite a fool. But she felt that if George
went on being martyred, and mechanically polite,

THE STURDY OAK 103

and grim, she would go into hysterics. She had
been married less than six weeks; that night she
cried herself to sleep.

Her guests were as agreeable as their natures per-
mitted ; but Genevieve was reduced, before the third
day of their visit, to a condition of continual tears.

This was her home, this was the place sacred to
George and herself, and their love. Nobody in the
world, — not his mother, not hers, had their
mothers been living ! — was welcome here. She had
planned to be such a good wife to him, so thought-
ful, so helpful, so brave when he must be away.
But she could not rise to the height of sharing him
with other women, and saying whatever she said
to him in the hearing of witnesses. And then
she dared not complain too openly! That was an
additional hardship, for if George insulted his
guests, then that horrid Penny

Genevieve had always liked Penny, and had
danced and flirted with him seons ago. She had
actually told Betty that she hoped Betty would
marry Penny. But now she felt that she loathed
him. He was secretly laughing at George, at

I04 THE STURDY OAK

George who had dared to take a stand for old-
fashioned virtue and the purity of the home!

It was all so unexpected, so hard. Women every-
where were talking about George's article, and ex-
pected her to defend it! George, she could have
defended. But how could she talk about a subject
upon which she was not informed, in which, indeed,
as she was rather fond of saying, she was absolutely
uninterested ?

George was changed, too. Something was worry-
ing him ; and it was hard on the darling old boy to
come home to Miss Emelene and the cat and
Eleanor and Alys, every night! Emelene adored
him, of course, and Alys was always interesting
and vivacious, but — but it wasn't like coming home
to his own little Genevieve!

The bride wept in secret, and grew nervous and
timid in manner. Mrs. Brewster-Smith, however,
found this comprehensible enough, and one hot
summer afternoon Genevieve went into George's
office with her lovely head held high, her color
quite gone, and her breath coming quickly with
indignation.

It was hard on the darling old boy to come home to Miss Emelene
and the cat and Eleanor and Alys every night!

THE STURDY OAK 105

" George — I don't care what we do, or where
we go! But I can't stand it! She said — she said
— she told me "

Her husband was alone in his office, and Gene-
vieve was now crying in his arms. He patted her
shoulder tenderly.

" I'm so worried all the time about dinners, and
Lottie's going, and that child getting downstairs
and letting in flies and licking the frosting off the
maple cake," sobbed Genevieve, " that of course I
show it! And if I have given up my gym work,
it's just because I was so busy trying to get some
one in Lottie's place ! And now they say — they say
— that they know what the matter is, and that I
mustn't dance or play golf — the horrible, spying
cats! I won't go back, George, I will not! I "

Again George was wonderful. He put his arm
about her, and she sat down on the edge of his
desk, and leaned against that dear protective shoul-
der and dried her eyes on one of his monogrammed
handkerchiefs. He reminded her of a long-standing
engagement for this evening with Betty and Penny,
to go out to Sea Light and have dinner and a

io6 THE STURDY OAK

swim, and drive home in the moonlight. And when
she was quiet again, he said tenderly:

" You mustn't let the ' cats ' worry you. Pussy.
What they think isn't true, and I don't blame you
for getting cross! But in one way, dear, aren't
they right? Hasn't my little girl been riding and
driving and dancing a little too hard? Is it the
wisest thing, just now? You have been nervous
lately, dear, and excitable. Mightn't there be a
reason? Because I don't have to tell you, sweet-
heart, nothing would make me prouder, and Uncle
Martin, of course, has made no secret of how he
feels ! You wouldn't be sorry, dear ? "

Genevieve had always loved children deeply.
Long before this her happy dreams had peopled
the old house in Sheridan Road with handsome,
dark-eyed girls, and bright-eyed boys like their
father.

But, to her own intense astonishment, she found
this speech from her husband distasteful. George
would be " proud," and Uncle Martin pleased. But
it suddenly occurred to Genevieve that neither
George nor Uncle Martin would be tearful and

THE STURDY OAK 107

nervous. Neither George nor Uncle Martin need
eschew golf and riding and dancing. To be sick,
when she had always been so well ! To face death,
for which she had always had so healthy a horror !
Cousin Alex had died when her baby came, and
Lois Farwell had never been well after the fourth
Farwell baby made his appearance.

Genevieve's tears died as if from flame. She
gently put aside the sustaining arm, and went to
the little mirror on the wall, to straighten her hat.
She remembered buying this hat, a few weeks ago,
in the ecstatic last days of the old life.

" We needn't talk of that yet, George," she said
quietly.

She could see George's grieved look, in the mirror.
There was a short silence in the office.

Then Betty Sheridan, cool in pongee, came
briskly in.

" Hello, Jinny t " said she. " Had you forgotten
our plan tonight? You're chaperoning me, I hope
you realize! I'm rather difficile, too. Genevieve,
Pudge is outside; he'll take you out and buy you
something cold. I took him to lunch today. It was

io8 THE STURDY OAK

disgraceful! Except for a frightful-looking mess
called G€rman Pot Roast With Carrots and Noodles
Sixty, he ate nothing but melon, lemon-meringue
pie, and pineapple special. I was absolutely ashamed !
George, I would have speech with you."

"Private business, Betty?" he asked pleasantly.
" My wife may not have the vote, but I trust her
with all my affairs ! "

" Indeed, I'm not in the least interested ! " Gene-
vieve said saucily.

She knew George was pleased with her as she
went happily away.

" It's just as well Jinny went," said Betty, when
she and the district-attorney-elect were alone.
" Because it's that old bore Colonel Jaynes ! He's
come again, and he says he will see you! "

Deep red rose in George's handsome face.

" He came here last week, and he came yester-
day," Betty said, sitting down, " and really I think
you should see him! You see, George, in that far-
famed article of yours, you remarked that ' a vet-
eran of the civil as well as the Spanish war ' had
told you that it was the restless outbreaking of a

THE STURDY OAK 109

few northern women that helped to precipitate the
national catastrophe, and he wants to know if you
meant him ! "

" I named no names ! " George said, with dignity,
yet uneasily, too.

" I know you didn't. But you see we haven't
many veterans of both wars," Betty went on, pleas-
antly. " And of course old Mrs. Jaynes is a rabid
suffragist, and she is simply hopping. He's a mild
old man, you know, and evidently he wants to
square things with ' Mother.' Now, George, who
did you mean ? "

" A statement like that may be made in a
general sense," George remarked, after scowling
thought.

" You might have made the statement on your
own hook," Betty conceded, " but when you men-
tion an anonymous Colonel, of course they all sit
up ! He says that he's going to get a signed state-
ment from you that he never said that, and publish
it!"

" Ridiculous ! " said George.

" Then here are two letters," Betty pursued.

no THE STURDY OAK

" One is from the corresponding secretary of the
Women's Non-partisan Pacific Coast Association.
She says that they would be glad to hear from you
regarding your statement that equal suffrage, in the
western states, is an acknowledged failure."

" She'll wait ! " George predicted grimly.

" Yes, I suppose so. But she's written to our
Mrs. Herrington here, asking her to follow up the
matter. George, dear," asked Betty maternally,
" why did you do it ? Why couldn't you let well
enough alone ! "

"What's your other letter? " asked George.

" It's just from Mr. Riker, of the Sentinel,
George. He wants you to drop in. It seems that
they want a correction on one of your statistics
about the number of workingwomen in the United
States who don't want the vote. He says it only
wants a signed line from you that you were mis-
taken "

Refusing to see Colonel Jaynes, or to answer
the Colonel's letter, George curtly telephoned the
editor of the Sentinel, and walked home at four
o'clock, his cheeks still burning, his mind in a whirl.

THE STURDY OAK in

Big issues should have been absorbing him : and his
mind was pestered instead with these midges of the
despised cause. Well, it was all in the day's
work

And here was his sweet, devoted wife, fluttering
across the hall, as cool as a rose, in her pink and
white. And she had packed his things, in case they
wanted to spend the night at Sea Light, and the
" cats " had gone off for library books, and he
must have some ginger-ale, before it was time to
go for Betty and Penny.

The day was perfection. The motor-car purred
like a racing tiger under George's gloved hand.
Betty and Penny were waiting, and the three young
persons forgot all differences, and laughed and
chatted in the old happy way, as they prepared for
the start. But Betty was carrying a book: Cath-
erine of Russia.

" Do you know why suffragists should make an
especial study of queens, George?" she asked, as
she and Penny settled themselves on the back
seat.

" Well, I'll be interlocutor," George smiled,

112 THE STURDY OAK

glancing up at the house, from which his wife might
issue at any moment. " Why should suffragists
read the lives of queens, Miss Bones ? "

" Because queens are absolutely the only women
in all history who had equal rights ! " Betty answered
impassively. "Do you realize that? The only
women whose moral and social and political instincts
had full sway ! "

" And a sweet use they made of them, some-
times ! " said George.

" And who were the great rulers," pursued Betty.
" Whose name in English history is like the names
of Elizabeth and Victoria, or Matilda or Mary,
for the matter of that? Who mended and con-
served and built up what the kings tore down
and wasted? Who made Russia an intellectual
power "

Again Penny had an odd sense of fear. Were
women perhaps superior to men, after all!

" I don't think Catherine of Russia is a woman
to whom a lady can point with pride," George said
conclusively. Genevieve, who had appeared, shot
Betty a triumphant glance as they started.

THE STURDY OAK 113

Pudge waved to them from the candy store at the
corner.

" There's a new candy store every week ! " said
Penny, shuddering. " Heaven help that poor boy ;
it must be in the blood ! "

" Women must always have something sweet to
nibble," George said, leaning back. " The United
States took in two millions last year in gum alone ! "

" Men chew gum ! " suggested Betty.

" But come now, Betty, be fair ! " George said.
"Which sex eats more candy?"

" Well, I suppose women do," she admitted.

" You count the candy stores, down Main Street,"
George went on, " and ask yourself how it is that
these people can pay rents and salaries just on
candy, — nothing else. Did you ever think of that? "

" Well, I could vote with a chocolate in my
mouth ! " Betty muttered mutinously, as the car
turned into the afternoon peace of the main
thoroughfare.

" You count them on your side. Penny, and I
will on mine ! " Genevieve suggested. " All down
the street."

114 THE STURDY OAK

" Well, wait — we've passed two ! " Penny said
excitedly.

" Go on ; there's three. That grocery store with
candy in the window ! "

" Groceries don't count ! " objected Betty.

" Oh, they do, too ! And drug stores. . . .
Every place that sells candy ! "

" Drug stores and groceries and fruit stores only
count half a point," Betty stipulated. " Because
they sell other things ! "

" That's fair enough," George conceded here,
with a nod.

Genevieve and Penny almost fell out of the car
in their anxiety not to miss a point, and George
quite deliberately lingered on the cross-streets, so
that the damning total might be increased.

Laughing and breathless, they came to the bridge
that led from the town to the open fields, and took
the count.

" One hundred and two and a half ! " shouted
Penny and Genevieve triumphantly. George smiled
over his wheel.

" Oh, women, women ! " he said.

THE STURDY OAK 115

" One hundred and sixty-one ! " said Betty.
There was a shout of protest.

"Oh, Betty Sheridan! You didn't! Why, we
didn't miss one! "

" I wasn't counting candy stores," smiled Betty.
"Just to be different, I counted cigar stores and
saloons. But it doesn't signify much either way,
does it, George? "

CHAPTER VI
BY HENRY KITCHELL WEBSTER

Of the quartette who, an hour later, emerged
from the bath-houses and scampered across the
satiny beech into a discreetly playful surf, Gene-
vieve was the one real swimmer. She was better
even than Penny, and she left Betty and George
nowhere.

She had an endless repertory of amphibious stunts
which she performed with gusto, and in the inter-
vals she took an equal satisfaction in watching
Penny's heroic but generally disastrous attempts to
imitate them.

The other two splashed around aimlessly and now
and then remonstrated.

Now, it's all very well to talk about two hearts
beating as one, and in the accepted poetical sense of
the words, of course Genevieve's and George's did.
But as a matter of physiological fact, they didn't.

Ii6

THE STURDY OAK 117

At the end of twenty minutes or so George began
turning a delicate blue and a clatter as of distant
castanets provided an obligato when he spoke, the
same being performed by George's teeth.

The person who made these observations was
Betty.

" You'd better go out," she said. " You're
freezing."

It ought to have been Genevieve who said it, of
course, though the fact that she was under water
more than half the time might be advanced as her
excuse for failing to say it. But who could venture
to excuse the downright callous way in which she
exclaimed, " Already ? Why we've just got in !
Come along and dive through that wave. That'll
warm you up ! "

It was plain to George that she didn't care whether
he was cold or not. And, though the idea wouldn't
quite go into words, it was also clear to him
that an ideal wife — a really womanly wife —
would have turned blue just a little before he
began to.

" Thanks," he said, in a cold blue voice that

ii8 THE STURDY OAK

matched the color of his finger nails. " I think I've
had enough."

Betty came splashing along beside him.

" I'm going out, too," she said. " We'll leave
these porpoises to their innocent play."

This was almost pure amiability, because she
wasn't cold, and she'd been having a pretty good
time. Her other (practically negligible) motive was
that Penny might be reminded, by her withdrawal,
of his forgotten promise to teach her to float — ^and
be sorry. Altogether, George would have been
showing only a natural and reasonable sense of his
obligations if he'd brightened up and flirted with
her a little, instead of glooming out to sea the way
he did, paying simply no attention to her at all. So
at last she pricked him.

" Isn't it funny," she said, " the really blighting
contempt that swimmers feel for people who can't
feel at home in the water — people who gasp and
shiver and keep their heads dry?"

She could see that, in one way, this remark had
done George good. It helped warm him up. Lean-
ing back on her hands, as she did, she could see

THE STURDY OAK 119

the red come up the back of his neck and spread
into his ears. But it didn't make him conversa-
tionally any more exciting. He merely grunted.
So she tried again.

" I suppose," she said dreamily, " that the myth
about mermaids must be founded in fact. Or is it
sirens I'm thinking about? Perfectly fascinating,
irresistible women, who lure men farther and far-
ther out, in the hope of a kiss or something, until
they get exhausted and drown. I'll really be glad
when Penny gets back alive."

" And I shall be very glad," said George, trying
hard for a tone of condescending indifference ap-
propriate for use with one who has played dolls
with one's little sister, " I shall really be very glad
when you make up your mind what you are going
to do with Penny. He's just about a total loss
down at the office as it is, and he's getting a worse
idiot from day to day. And the worst of it is, I
imagine you know all the while what you're going
to do about it — whether you're going to take him
or not."

The girl flushed at that. He was being almost

120 THE STURDY OAK

too outrageously rude, even for George. But be-
fore she said anything to that effect, she thought of
something better.

" I shall never marry any man," she said very
intensely, " whose heart is not with the Cause.
You know what Cause I mean, George — the Suf-
frage Cause. When I see thoughtless girls handing
over their whole lives to men who ..."

It sounded like the beginning of an oration.

" Good Lord ! " her victim cried. " Isn't there
anything else than that to talk about — ever? "

" But just think how lucky you are, George,"
she said, " that at home they all think exactly as
you do ! "

He jumped up. Evidently this reminder of the
purring acquiescences of Cousin Emelene and Mrs.
Brewster-Smith laid no balm upon his harassed
spirit.

" You may leave my home alone, if you please."

He was frightfully annoyed, of course, or he
wouldn't have said anything as crude as that. In
a last attempt to recover his scattered dignity, he
caught at his office manner.

THE STURDY OAK 121

" By the way," he said, " you forgot to remind
me today to write a letter to that Eliot woman about
Mrs. Brewster-Smith's cottages."

With that he stalked away to dress. Genevieve
and Penny, now shoreward bound, hailed him. But
it wasn't quite impossible to pretend he didn't hear,
and he did it.

The dinner afterward at the Sea Light Inn was a
rather gloomy affair. George's lonely grandeur was
only made the worse, it seemed, by Genevieve's be-
lated concern lest he might have taken cold through
not having gone and dressed directly he came out
of the water. Genevieve then turned very frosty
to Penny, having decided suddenly that it was all
his fault.

As for Betty, though she was as amiable a little
soul as breathed, she didn't see why she should make
any particular effort to console Penny, just because
his little flirtation with Genevieve had stopped with
a bump.

Even the ride home in the moonlight didn't help
much. Genevieve sat beside George on the front
seat, and between them there stretched a tense,

122 THE STURDY OAK

tragic silence. In the back seat with Penfield Evans,
and in the intervals of frustrating his attempts to
hold her hand, Betty considered how frightfully
silly young married couples could be over micro-
scopic differences.

But Betty was wrong here and the married pair
on the front seat were right.

Just reflect for a minute what Genevieve's George
was. He was her knight, her Bayard, her thor-
oughly Tennysonian King Arthur. The basis of
her adoration was that he should remain like that.
You can see then what a staggering experience it
was to have caught herself, even for a minute, in
the act of smiling over him as sulky and absurd.

And think of George's Genevieve! A saint en-
shrined, that his soul could profitably bow down
before whenever it had leisure to escape from the
activities of a wicked world. Fancy his horror
over the mere suspicion that she could be indifferent
to his wishes — his comfort — even his health, because
of a mere tomboy flirtation with a man who could
swim better than he could ! Most women were like
that, he knew — vain, shallow, inconstant creatures!

THE STURDY OAK 123

But was not his pearl an exception ? It was horrible
to have to doubt it.

By three o'clock the next morning, after many
tears and much grave discourse, they succeeded in
getting these doubts to sleep — killing them, they'd
have said, beyond the possibility of resurrection.
It was the others who had made all the trouble.
If only they could have the world to themselves —
no Cousin Emelene, no Alys Brewster-Smith, no
Penfield Evans and Betty Sheridan, with their
frivolity and low ideals, to complicate things ! An
Arcadian Island in some ^Eonian Sea.

" Well," he said hopefully, " our home can be
like that. It shall be like that, when we get rid of
Alys and her horrible little girl, and Cousin Eme-
lene and her unspeakable cat. It shall be our world ;
and no troubles or cares or worries shall ever get
in there ! "

She acquiesced in this prophecy, but even as she
did so, cuddling her face against his own, a low-
down, unworthy spook, whose existence in her he
must never suspect, said audibly in her inner ear,
" Much he knows about it ! "

124 THE STURDY OAK

Betty did not forget to remind George of the
letter he was to write to Miss Eliot about taking
over the agency of Mrs. Brewster-Smith's cottages.
In the composition of this letter George washed his
hands of responsibility with, you might say, anti-
septic care.

He had taken pleasure in recommending Miss
Eliot, he explained, and Mrs. Brewster-Smith was
acting on his recommendation. Any questions aris-
ing out of the management of the property should
be taken "up directly with her client. Miss EHot
would have no difficulty in understanding that the
enormous pressure of work which now beset him
precluded him from having anything more to do
with the matter.

The letter was typed and inclosed in a big linen
envelope, with the mess of papers Alys had dumped
upon his desk a few days previously, and it was
despatched forthwith by the office boy.

" There," said George on a note of grim satis-
faction, " that's done ! "

The grimness lasted, but the satisfaction did not.
Or only until the return of the office boy, half an

THE STURDY OAK 125

hour later, with the identical envelope and a three-
line typewritten note from Miss Eliot. She was
sorry to say, she wrote, that she did not consider
it advisable to undertake the agency for the prop-
erty in question. Thanking him, nevertheless, for
his courtesy, she was his very truly, E. Eliot.

George summoned Betty by means of the buzzer,
and asked her, with icy indignation, what she
thought of that. But, as he was visibly bursting
with impatience to say what he thought of it, she
gave him the opportunity.

" I thought you advanced women," he said,
" were supposed to stand by each other — stand by
all women — try to make things better for them.
One for all — all for one. That sort of thing. But
it really works the other way. It's just because
a woman owns those cottages that Miss Eliot won't
have anything to do with them. She knows that
women are unreasonable and hard to get on with
in business matters, so she passes the buck! Back
to a man, if you please, who hasn't any more real
responsibility for it than she has."

There was, of course, an obvious retort to this;

126 THE STURDY OAK

namely, that business was business, and that a busi-
ness woman had the same privilege a business man
had, of declining a job that looked as if it would en-
tail more bother than it was worth. But Betty
couldn't quite bring herself to take this line.
Women, if they could ever get the chance (through
the vote and in other ways), were going to make
the world a better place — run it on a better lot of
ideals. It wouldn't do to begin justifying women
on the ground that they were only doing what men
did. As well abandon the whole crusade right at
the beginning.

George saw her looking rather thoughtful, and
pressed his advantage. Suppose Betty went and
saw Miss Eliot personally, sometime today,
and urged her to reconsider. The business didn't
amount to much, it was true, and it no doubt in-
volved the adjustment of some troublesome details.
But unless Miss Eliot would undertake it, he
wouldn't know just where to turn. Alys had quar-
reled with Allen, and Sampson was a skate. And
perhaps a little plain talk to Alys about the condi-
tion of the cottages — " from one of her own sex,"

THE STURDY OAK 127

George said this darkly and looked away out of the
window at the time — might be productive of good.

" All right," Betty agreed, " I'll see what I can
do. It's kind of hard to go to a woman you barely
know by sight, and talk to her about her duty, but
I guess I'm game. If you can spare me, I'll go now
and get it over with."

There were no frills about Edith Eliot's real
estate office, though the air of it was comfortably
busy and prosperous.

The place had once been a store. An architect's
presentation of an apartment building, now rather
dusty, occupied the show-window. There was desk
accommodation for two or three of those bright
young men who make a selection of keys and take
people about to look at houses ; there was a stenog-
rapher's desk with a stenographer sitting at it; and
back of a table in the corner, in the attitude of one
making herself as comfortable as the heat of the
day would permit, while she scowled over a volum-
inous typewritten document, was E. Eliot herself.
It was almost superfluous to mention that her name
was Edith. She never signed it, and there was

128 THE STURDY OAK

no one, in Whitewater anyway, who called her
by it.

She was a big-boned young woman (that is, if
you call the middle thirties young), with an intelli-
gent, homely face, which probably got the attrac-
tion some people surprisingly found in it from the
fact that she thought nothing about its looks one
way or the other. It was rather red when Betty
came in, and she was making it rapidly redder
with the vigorous ministrations of a man's-size
handkerchief.

She greeted Betty with a cordial " how-de-doo,"
motioned her to the other chair at the table (Betty
had a fleeting wish that she might have dusted it
before she sat down), and asked what she could
do for her.

" I'm from Mr. Remington's office," Betty said,
" Remington and Evans. He wrote you a note this
morning about some cottages that belong to a cousin
of his, Mrs. Brewster-Smith."

" I answered that note by his own messenger,"
said E. Eliot. " He should have got the reply be-
fore this."

THE STURDY OAK 129

" Oh, he got it," said Betty, " and was rather
upset about it. What I've come for, is to urge you
to reconsider."

E. Eliot smiled rather grimly at her blotting-pad,
looked up at Betty, and allowed her smile to change
its quality. What she said was not what she had
meant to say before she looked up. E. Eliot was
always upbraiding herself for being sentimental
about youth and beauty in her own sex. She'd
never been beautiful, and she'd never been young —
not young like Betty. But the upbraidings never did
any good.

She said : " I thought I had considered sufficiently
when I answered Mr. Remington's note. But it's
possible I hadn't. What is it you think I may have
overlooked? "

" Why," said Betty, " George thought the reason
you wouldn't take the cottages was because a woman
owned them. He used it as a sort of example of
how women wouldn't stick together. He said that
you probably knew that women were unreasonable
and hard to deal with and didn't want the bother."

It disconcerted Betty a little that E. Eliot inter-

130 THE STURDY OAK

posed no denial at this point, though she'd paused
to give her the opportunity.

" You see," she went on a little breathlessly, " I'm
for women suffrage and economic independence
and all that. I think it's perfectly wonderful that
you should be doing what you are — showing that
women can be just as successful in business as men
can. Of course I know that you've got a perfect
right to do just what a man would do — refuse to
take a piece of business that wasn't worth while.
But — but what we hope is, and what we want to
show men is, that when women get into politics
and business they'll be better and less selfish."

" Which do you mean will be better ? " E. Eliot
inquired. " The politics and the business, or the
women? "

" I mean the politics and the business," Betty
told her r^ither frostily. Was the woman merely
making fun of her?

E. Eliot caught the note. " I meant my ques-
tion seriously," she said. " It has a certain im-
portance. But I didn't mean to interrupt you. Go
ahead."

THE STURDY OAK 131

" Well," Betty said, " that's about all. George-
Mr. Remington — that is — is running for district
attorney, and he has come out against sufFrage as
you know. I thought perhaps this was a chance
to convert him a little. It would be a great favor
to him, anyway, if you took the cottages; because
he doesn't know whom to turn to, if you won't.
I didn't come to try to tell you what your duty is,
but I thought perhaps you hadn't just looked at it
that way."

" All right," said E. Eliot. " Now I'll tell you
how I do look at it. In the first place, about doing
business for women. It all depends on the woman
you're doing business with. If she's had the busi-
ness training of a man, she's as easy to deal with
as a man. If she's never had any business training
at all, if business doesn't mean anything to her
except some vague hocus-pocus that produces her
income, then she's seven kinds of a Tartar.

" She has no more notion about what she has
a right to expect from other people, or what they've
a right to expect from her, than a white Angora
cat. Of course, the majority of women who have

132 THE STURDY OAK

property to attend to have had it dumped on their
hands in middle life, or after, by the wills of lov-
ing husbands. Those women, I'll say frankly, are
the devil and all to deal with. But it's their hus-
bands' and fathers' fault, and not their own. Any-
how, that isn't the reason I wouldn't take those
cottages.

" It was the cottages themselves, and not the
woman who owned them, that decided me. That
whole Kentwood district is a disgrace to civiliza-
tion. The sanitary conditions are filthy; have been
for years. The owners have been resisting con-
demnation proceedings right along, on the ground
that the houses brought in so little rental that it
would be practical confiscation to compel them to
make any improvements. Now, since the war
boon struck the mills, and every place with four
walls and a roof is full, they're saying they can't
aflford to make any change because of the frightful
loss they'd suffer in potential profits.

" Well, when you agree to act as a person's agent,
you've got to act in that person's interest ; and when
it's a question of the interest of the owners of those

THE STURDY OAK 133

Kentwood cottages, whether they're men or women,
my idea was that I didn't care for the job."

" I think you're perfectly right about it," Betty
said. " I wouldn't have come to urge you to change
your mind, if I had understood what the situation
was. But," here she held out her hand, " I'm
glad I did come, and I wish we might meet
again sometime and get acquainted and talk about
things."

" No time like the present," said E. Eliot. " Sit
down again, if you've got a minute." She added,
as Betty dropped back into her chair, • " You're
Elizabeth Sheridan, aren't you? — Judge Sheridan's
daughter? And you're working as a stenographer
for Remington and Evans ? "

Betty nodded and stammered out the beginning
of an apology for not having introduced herself
earlier. But the older woman waved this aside.

" What I really want to know," she went on, " if
it isn't too outrageous a question, is what on earth
you're doing it for — working in that law office, I
mean? "

It was a question Betty was well accustomed to

134 THE STURDY OAK

answering. But coming from this source, it sur-
prised her into a speechless stare.

" Why," she said at last, " I do it because I be-
lieve in economic independence for women. Don't
you? But of course you do."

" I don't know," said E. Eliot. " I believe in
food and clothes, and money to pay the rent, and
the only way I have ever found of having those
things was to get out and earn them. But if ever
I make money enough to give me an independent
income half the size of what yours must be, I'll
retire from business in short order."

" Do you know," said Betty, " I don't believe
you would. I think you're mistaken. I don't be-
lieve a woman like you could live without working."

" I didn't say I'd quit working," said E. Eliot.
" I said I'd quit business. That's another thing.
There's plenty of real work in the world that won't
earn you a living. Lord! Don't I see it going by
right here in this office! There are things I just
itch to get my hands into, and I have to wait and
tell myself 'some day, perhaps!' There's a thing
I'd like to do now, and that's to take a hand in this

THE STURDY OAK 135

political campaign for district attorney. It would
kill my business deader than Pharaoh's aunt, so
I've got to let it go. But it would certainly put
your friend George Remington up a tall tree."

" Oh, you're a suffragist, then ? " Betty ex-
claimed eagerly. " I was wondering about that.
I've never seen you at any of our meetings."

" I'm a suffragist, all right," said E. Eliot, " but
as your meetings are mostly held in the afternoons,
when I'm pretty busy, I haven't been able to get
'round.

" I'm curious about Remington," she went on.
" I've known him a little, for years. When I
worked for Allen, I used to see him quite often in
the office. And I'd always rather liked him. So
that I was surprised, clear down to the ground, when
I read that statement of his in the Sentinel. I'd
never thought he was that sort. And from the fact
that you work in his office and like him well enough
to call him George one might almost suppose he
wasn't."

Clearly Betty was puzzled. " Of course," she
said, " I think his views about women are obsolete

136 THE STURDY OAK

and ridiculous. But I don't see what they've got
to do with liking him or not, personally."

E. EHot's smile became grim again, but she said
nothing, so Betty asked a direct question.

" That was what you meant, wasn't it ? "

" Yes," the other woman said, " that was what
I meant. Why, if you don't mind plain speaking,
it's been my observation that the sort of men who
think the world is too indecent for decent women
to go out into, generally have their own reasons
for knowing how indecent it is ; and that when they
spring a line of talk like that, they're being sicken-
ing hypocrites into the bargain."

Betty's face had gone flame color.

" George isn't like that at all," she said. " He's
— he's really fine. He's old-fashioned and senti-
mental about women, but he isn't a hypocrite. He
really means those things he says. Why ..."

And then Betty went on to tell her new friend
about Cousin Emelene and Alys Brewster-Smith,
and how George, though he writhed, had stood the

gaff.

" A grown-up man," E. Eliot summed up, " who

THE STURDY OAK 137

honestly believes that women are made of some-
thing fine and fragile, and that they ought to be
kept where even the wind can't blow upon them!
But good heavens, child, if he really means that,
it makes it all the better for what I was thinking
of. You don't understand, of course. I hadn't
meant to tell you, but I've changed my mind.

" Listen now. That statement in the Sentinel has
set the town talking, of course, and stirred up a lot
of feeling, for and against sufifrage. But what it
would be worth as an issue to go to the mat with on
election day, is exactly nothing at all. You go out
and ask a voter to vote against a candidate for
district attorney because he's an anti-suffragist,
and he'll say, ' What difference does it make ? It
isn't up to him to give women the vote. It doesn't
matter to me what his private opinions are, as long
as he makes a good district attorney ! ' But there
is an issue that we can go to the mat with, and so
far it hasn't been raised at all. There hasn't been
a peep." She reached over and laid a hand on
Betty's arm.

" Do you know what the fire protection laws for

138 THE STURDY OAK

factories are? And do you know that it's against
the law for women to work in factories at night?
Well, and do you know what the conditions are
in every big mill in this town? With this boom
in war orders, they've simply taken off the lid.
Anything goes. The fire and building ordinances
are disregarded, and for six months the mills have
been running a night shift as well as a day shift, on
Sundays and week-days, and three-quarters of their
operatives are women. Those women go to work
at seven o'clock at night, and quit at six in the
morning; and they have an hour off from twelve
to one in the middle of the night.

" Now do you see ? It's up to the district attor-
ney to enforce the law. Isn't it fair to ask this
defender of the home whether he believes that
women should be home at night or not, and if he
does, what he's going to do about it? Talk about
slogans ! The situation bristles with them ! We
could placard this town with a lot of big black-faced
questions that would make it the hottest place for
George Remington that he ever found himself in.

" Well, it would be pretty good campaign work

THE STURDY OAK 139

if he was the hypocrite I took him to be, from his
stufif in the Sentinel. But if he's on the level, as
you think he is, there's a chance — don't you see
there's a chance that he'd come out flat-footed for
the enforcement of the law ? And if he did! . . .
Child, can you see what would happen if he didf "

Betty's eyes were shining like a pair of big
sapphires. When she spoke, it was in a whisper
like an excited child.

" I can see a little," she said. " I think I can
see. But tell me."

" In the first place," said E. Eliot, " see whom
he'd have against him. There'd be the best people,
to start with. Most of them are stockholders in
the mills. Why, you must be, yourself, in the
Jaffry-Bradshaw Company ! Your father was, any-
way."

Betty nodded.

" You want to be sure you know what it means,"
the older woman went on. " This thing might cut
into your dividends, if it went through."

" I hope it will," said Betty fiercely. " I never
realized before that my money was earned like that

HO THE STURDY OAK

— by women, girls of my age, standing over a ma-
chine all night." She shivered. " And there are
some of us, I'm sure," she went on, " who would
feel the way I do about it."

" Well, — some," E. Eliot admitted. " Not many,
though. And then there are the merchants. These
are great times for them — town crammed with
people, all making money, and buying right and left.
And then there's the labor vote itself! A lot of
laboring men would be against him. Their women
just now are earning as much as they are. There
are a lot of these men — whatever they might say —
who'd take good care not to vote for a man who
would prevent their daughters from bringing in the
fifteen, twenty, or twenty-five dollars a week they
get for that night work.

" Well, and who would be with him ? Why, the
women themselves. The one chance on earth he'd
have for election would be to have the women or-
ganized and working for him, bringing every ounce
of influence they had to bear on their men — on all
the men they knew.

" Mind you, I don't believe he could win at that.

THE STURDY OAK 141

But, win or lose, he'd have done something. He'd
have shown the women that they needed the vote,
and he'd have found out for himself — he and the
other men who believe in fair human treatment for
everybody — that they can't secure that treatment
without women's votes. That's the real issue. It
isn't that women are better than men, or that they
could run the world better if they got the chance.
It's that men and women have got to work together
to do the things that need doing."

"You're perfectly wonderful," said Betty, and
sat thereafter, for perhaps a minute and a half, in
an entranced silence.

Then, with a shake of the head, a straightening
of the spine, and a good, deep, business-like pre-
liminary breath, she turned to her new friend and
said, "Well, shall we do it?"

This time it was E. Eliot's turn to gasp.

She hadn't expected to have a course of action
put up to her in that instantaneous and almost casual
manner. She wasn't young like Betty. She'd been
working hard ever since she was seventeen years
old. She'd succeeded, in a way, to be sure. But

142 THE STURDY OAK

her success had taught her how hard success is to
obtain. She saw much farther into the conse-
quences of the proposed campaign than Betty could
see. She reahzed the bitter animosity that it would
provoke. She knew it was well within the prob-
abilities that her business would be ruined by it.

She sat there silent for a while, her face getting
grimmer and grimmer all the time. But she turned
at last and looked into the eager face of the girl
beside her, and she smiled, — though even the smile
was grim.

" All right," she said, holding out her hand to
bind the bargain. " We'll start and we'll stick.
And here's hoping! We'd better lunch together,
hadn't we?"

CHAPTER VII
BY ANNE O'HAGAN

Mr. Benjamin Doolittle, by profession White-
water's leading furniture dealer and funeral di-
rector, and by the accident of political fortune the
manager of Mr. George Remington's campaign, sat
in his candidate's private office, and from time
to time restrained himself from hasty speech by
the diplomatic and dexterous use of a quid of
tobacco.

He found it difficult to preserve his philosophy

in the face of George Remington's agitation over
the woman's suffrage issue.

" It's the last time," he had frequently informed
his political cronies since the opening of the cam-
paign, " that I'll wet-nurse a new-fledged candidate.
They've got at least to have their milk teeth
through if they want Benjamin Doolittle after
this."

'43

144 THE STURDY OAK

To George, itchingly aware through all his rasped
nerves of Mrs. Herrington's letter in that morn-
ing's Sentinel asking him to refute, if he could, an
abominable half column of statistics in regard to
legislation in the Woman Suffrage States, the fur-
niture dealer was drawling pacifically :

" Now, George, you made a mistake in letting
the women get your goat. Don't pay no attention
to them. Of course their game's fair enough. I
will say that you gave them their opening; stood
yourself for a target with that statement of yours.
Howsomever, you ain't obligated to keep on acting
as the nigger head in the shooting gallery.

" Let 'em write ; let 'em ask questions in the pa-
pers; let 'em heckle you on the stump. All that
you've got to say is that you've expressed your per-
sonal convictions already, and that you've stood by
those convictions in your private life, and that as
you ain't up for legislator, the question don't really
concern your candidacy. And that, as you're run-
ning for district attorney, you will, with their kind
permission, proceed to the subjects that do concern
you there — the condition of the court calendar of

THE STURDY OAK 145

Whitewater County, the prosecution of the race-
track gamblers out at Erie Oval, and so forth,
and so forth.

" You laid yourself open, George, but you ain't
obligated in law or equity to keep on presenting
yourself bare chest for their outrageous slings and
arrows."

"Of course, what you say about their total ir-
relevancy is quite true," said George, making the
concession so that it had all the belligerency of a
challenge. " But of course I would never have
consented to run for ofifice at the price of muzzling
my convictions."

Mr. Doolittle wearily agreed that that was more
than could be expected from any candidate of the
high moral worth of George Remington. Then
he went over a list of places throughout the county
where George was to speak during the next week,
and intimated dolefully that the committee could
use a little more money, if it had it.

He expressed it thus : " A few more contributions
wouldn't put any strain to speak of on our pants'
pockets. Anything more to be got out of Old Mar-

146 THE STURDY OAK

tin Jaffry? Don't he realize that blood's thicker
than water ? "

" I'll speak to him," growled George.

He hated Mr. Benjamin Doolittle's colloquialisms,
though once he had declared them amusing, racy,
of the soil, and had rebuked Genevieve's fastidious
criticisms of them on an occasion when she had
interpreted her role of helpmeet to include that of
hostess to Mr. and Mrs. Doolittle — oh, not in her
own hom«, of course ! — at luncheon, at the Country
Club!

" Well, I guess that's about all for today."

Mr. Doolittle brought the conference to a close,
hoisting himself by links from his chair.

" It takes $3000 every time you circularize the
constituency, you know "

He lounged toward the window and looked out
again upon the pleasant, mellow scene around
Fountain Square. And with the look his affecta-
tion of bucolic calm dropped from him. He turned
abruptly.

" What's that going on at McMonigal's corner ? "
he demanded sharply.

THE STURDY OAK 147

" I don't know, I am sure," said George, with
indifference, still bent upon teaching his manager
that he was a free and independent citizen, in lead-
ing strings to no man. " It's been vacant since the
fire in March, when Petrosini's fish market and Miss
Letterblair's hat st "

He had reached the window himself by this time,
and the sentence was destined to remain forever
unfinished.

From the low, old-fashioned brick building on
the northeast corner of Fountain Square, whose
Ijoarded eyes had stared blindly across toward the
glittering orbs of its towering neighbor, the Jaffry
Building, for six months, a series of great placards
flared.

Planks had been removed from the windows,
plate glass restored, and behind it he read in damn-
able irritation:

" Some Questions for Candidate Remington."

A foot high, an inch broad, black as Erebus, the
letters shouted at him against an orange background.

148 THE STURDY OAK

Every window of the second story contained a
placard. On the first story, in the show window
where Petrosini had been wont to ravish epicurean
eyes by shad and red snapper, perch and trout, cun-
ningly imbedded in ice blocks upon a marble slab —
in that window, framed now in the hated orange
and black, stood a woman.

She was turning backward, for the benefit of on-
lookers who pressed close to the glass, the leaves
of a mammoth pad resting upon an easel.

From their point of vantage in the second story
of the Jaffry Building, the candidate and his man-
ager could see that each sheet bore that horrid
headline :

" Questions for Candidate Remington."

The whole population of Whitewater, it seemed
to George, was crowded about that corner.

" I'll be back in a minute," said Benjie Doolittle,
disappearing through the private office door with
the black tails of his coat achieving a true hori-
zontal behind him. As statesman and as undertaker.

THE STURDY OAK 149

Mr. Doolittle never swerved from the garment
which keeps green the memory of the late Prince
Consort.

As the door opened, the much-tried George Rem-
ington had a glimpse of that pleasing industrial
unit, Betty Sheridan, searching through the file for
the copy of the letter to the Cummunipaw Steel
Works, which he had recently demanded to see.
He pressed the buzzer imperiously, and Betty re-
sponded with duteous haste. He pointed through
the window to the crowd in front of McMonigal's
block.

" Perhaps," he said, with what seemed to him
Spartan self-restraint, " you can explain the mean-
ing of that scene."

Betty looked out with an air of intelHgent in-
terest.

" Oh yes ! " she said vivaciously. " I think I can.
It's a Voiceless Speech."

"A voice 1 — " George's own face was a voice-
less speech as he repeated two syllables of his stenog-
rapher's explanation.

" Yes. Don't you know about voiceless speeches ?

150 THE STURDY OAK

It's antiquated to try to run any sort of a campaign
without them nowadays."

" Perhaps you also know who that — female — "
again George's power of utterance failed him.
Betty came closer to the window and peered
out.

" It's Frances Herrington who is turning the
leaves now," she said amiably. " I know her by
that ducky toque."

" Frances Herrington ! What Harvey Herring-
ton is thinking of to allow " George's emotion

constrained him to broken utterance. " And we're
dining there tonight ! She has no sense of the de-
cencies — the — the — the hospitality of existence. We
won't go — I'll telephone Genevieve "

" Fie, fie Georgie ! " observed Betty. " Why be
personal over a mere detail of a political cam-
paign?"

But before George could tell her why his indig-
nation against his prospective hostess was imper-
sonal and unemotional, the long figure of Mr. Doo-
little again projected itself upon the scene.

Betty eflfaced herself, gliding from the inner of-

THE STURDY OAK 151

fice, and George turned a look of inquiry upon his
manager.

"Well?" the monosyllable had all the force of
profanity.

" Well, the women, durn them, have brought suf-
frage into your campaign."

"How?"

" How? They've got a list of every blamed law
on the statute books relating to women and children,
and they're asking on that sheet of leaves over there,
if you mean to proceed against all who are break-
ing those laws here in Whitewater County. And
right opposite your own office! It's — it's damn
smart. You ought to have got that Herrington
woman on your committee."

" It's indelicate, unwomanly, indecent. It shows
into what unsexed degradation politics will drag
woman. But I'm relieved that that's all they're
asking. Of course, I shall enforce the law for the
protection of every class in our community with
all the power of the "

" Oh, shucks ! There's nobody here but me —
you needn't unfurl Old Glory," counseled Mr. Doo-

152 THE STURDY OAK

little, a trifle impatiently. " They're asking real
questions, not blowing off hot-air. Oh, I say, who
owns McMonigal's block since the old man died?
We'll have the owner stop this circus. That's the
first thing to do."

" I'll telephone Allen. He'll know."

Allen's office was very obliging and would report
on the ownership on McMonigal's block in ten
minutes.

Mr. Doolittle employed the interval in repeating
to George some of the " Questions for Candidate
Remington," illegible from George's desk.

" You believe that ' WOMAN'S PLACE IS IN
THE HOME.' Will you enforce the law against
woman's night work in the factories? Over nine
hundred women of Whitewater County are doing
night work in the munition plants of Airport,
Whitewater and Ondegonk. What do you mean to
do about it?"

"You 'DESIRE TO CONSERVE THE
THREATENED FLOWER OF WOMAN-
HOOD. ' "

A critical listener would have caught a note of

THE STURDY OAK i53

ribald scorn in Mr. Doolittle's drawl, as he quoted
from his candidate's statement, via the voiceless
speech placards.

" To conserve the threatened flower of woman-
hood, the grape canneries of Omega and Onicrom
Townships are employing children of five and six
years in defiance of the Child Labor Law of
this State. Are you going to proceed against
them ? "

'"WOMAN IS MAN'S RAREST HERI-
TAGE.' Do you think man ought to burn her
alive? Remember the Livingston Loomis-Ladd
collar factory fire — fourteen women killed, forty-
eight maimed. In how many of the factories in
Whitewater, in which women work, are the fire
laws obeyed? Do you mean to enforce them?"

The telephone interrupted Mr. Doolittle's hateful
litany.

Allen's bright young man begged to report that
McMonigal's block was held in fee simple by the
widow of the late Michael McMonigal.

Mr. Doolittle juggled the leaves of the telephone
directory with the dazzling swiftness of a Japanese

154 THE STURDY OAK

ball thrower, and in a few seconds he was speaking
to the relict of the late Michael.

George watched him with fevered eyes, listened
with fevered ears. The conversation, it was easy
to gather, did not proceed as Mr. Doolittle wished.

" Oh ! in entire charge — E. Eliot. Oh ! In sym-
pathy yourself. Oh, come now, Mrs. McMoni-
gal "

But Mrs. McMonigal did not come now. The
campaign manager frowned as he replaced the re-
ceiver.

" Widow owns the place. That Eliot woman is
the agent. The suffrage gang has the owner's per-
mission to use the building from now on to elec-
tion. She says she's in sympathy. Well, we'll have
to think of something "

" It's easy enough," declared George. " I'll
simply have a set of posters printed answering their
questions. And we'll engage sandwich men to carry
them in front of McMonigal's windows. Certainly
I mean to enforce the law. I'll give the order to
the Sentinel press now for the answers — definite,
dignified answers."

THE STURDY OAK 155

" See here, George." Mr. Doolittle interrupted
him with unusual weightiness of manner. " It's
too far along in the campaign for you to go
flying off on your own. You've got to consult
your managers. This is your first campaign; it's
my thirty-first. You've got to take advice "

" I will not be muzzled."

" Shucks ! Who wants to muzzle anybody ! But
you can't say everything that's inside of you, can
you? There's got to be some choosing. We've
got to help you choose.

" The silly questions the women are displaying
over there — you can't answer 'em in a word or
in two words. This city is having a boom; every
valve factory in the valley, every needle and pin
factory, is makin' munitions today — valves and
needles and pins all gone by the board for the time
being. Money's never been so plenty in White-
water County and this city is feelin' the benefits
of it. People are buying things — clothes, flour, fur-
niture, victrolas, automobiles, rum.

" There ain't a merchant of any description in
this county but his business is booming on account

156 THE STURDY OAK

of the work in the factories. You can't antagonize
the whole population of the place. Why, I dare
say, some of your own money and Mrs. Reming-
ton's is earning three times what it was two years
ago. The First National Bank has just declared a
fifteen per cent, dividend, and Martin Jafifry owns
fifty-four per cent, of the stock.

" You don't want to put brakes on prosperity.
It ain't decent citizenship to try it. It ain't neigh-
borly. Think of the lean years we've known. You
can't do it. This war won't last forever — " Mr.
Doolittle's voice was tinged with regret — " and it
will be time enough to go in for playing the deuce
•vith business when business gets slack again. That's
the time for reforms, George, — when things are
dull."

George was silent, the very presentment of a
sorely harassed young man. He had not, even in
a year when blamelessness rather than experience
was his party's supreme need in a candidate, be-
come its banner bearer without possessing certain
political apperceptions. He knew, as Benjie Doo-
little spoke, that Benjie spoke the truth — White-

THE STURDY OAK 157

water city and county would never elect a man who
had too convincingly promised to interfere with the
prosperity of the city and county.

" Better stick to the gambling out at Erie
Oval, George," counseled the campaign manager.
" They're mostly New Yorkers that are interested
in that, anyway."

" I'll not reply without due consideration and —
er — notice," George sullenly acceded to his man-
ager and to necessity. But he hated both Doolittle
and necessity at the moment.

That sun-bright vision of himself which so
splendidly and sustainingly companioned him, which
spoke in his most sonorous periods, which so com-
pletely and satisfyingly commanded the reverence of
Genevieve — that George Remington of his brave
imaginings would not thus have answered Benjamin
Doolittle.

Through the silence following the furniture man's
departure, Betty, at the typewriter, clicked upon
Georgie's ears. An evil impulse assailed him — im-
politic, too, as he realized — impolitic but irresist-
ible. It was the easiest way in which candidate

158 THE STURDY OAK

Remington, heckled by sufifragists, overridden by
his campaign committee, mortifyingly tormented by
a feeling of inadequacy, could re-establish himself
in his own esteem as a man of prompt and righteous
decisions.

He might not be able to run his campaign
to suit himself, but, by Jove, his office was his
own!

He went into Betty's quarters and suggested to
her that a due sense of the eternal fitness of things
would cause her to offer him her resignation, which
his own sense of the eternal fitness of things would
lead him at once to accept.

It seemed, he said, highly indecorous of her to
remain in the employ of Remington and Evans the
while she was busily engaged in trying to thwart
the ambitions of the senior partner. He marveled
that woman's boasted sensitiveness had not already
led her to perceive this for herself.

For a second, Betty seemed startled, even hurt.
She colored deeply and her eyes darkened. Then
the flush of surprise and the wounded feeling died.
She looked at him blankly and asked how soon it

THE STURDY OAK 159

would be possible for him to replace her. She
would leave as soon as he desired.

In her bearing, so much quieter than usual, in
the look in her face, George read a whole volume.
He read that up to this time, Betty had regarded
her presence in the ranks of his political enemies
as she would have regarded being opposed to him
in a tennis match. He read that he, with that bit-
ing little speech which he already wished unspoken,
had given her a sudden, sinister illumination upon
the relations of working women to their employers.

He read the question in the back of her mind.
Suppose (so it ran in his constructive fancy) that
instead of being a prosperous, protected young
woman playing the wage-earner more or less as
Marie Antoinette had played the milkmaid, she had
been Mamie Riley across the hall, whose work
was bitter earnest, whose earnings were not pin-
money, but bread and meat and brother's schooling
and mother's health — would George still have made
the stifling of her views the price of her position?

And if George — George, the kind, friendly, clean-
minded man would drive that bargain, what bar-

i6o THE STURDY OAK

gain might not other men, less gentle, less noble,
drive ?

All this George's unhappily sensitized conscience
read into Betty Sheridan's look, even as the imp
who urged him on bade him tell her that she could
leave at her own convenience; at once, if she
pleased; the supply of stenographers in Whitewater
was adequately at demand.

He rather wished that Penny Evans would come
in; Penny would doubtless take a high hand with
him concerning the episode, and there was nothing
which George Remington would have welcomed like
an antagonist of his own size and sex.

But Penny did not appear, and the afternoon
passed draggingly for the candidate for the dis-
trict attorneyship. He tried to busy himself with
the affairs of his clients, but even when he could
keep away from his windows he was aware of the
crowds in front of McMonigal's block, of Frances
Herrington, her " ducky " toque and her infernal
voiceless speech.

And when, for a second, he was able to forget
these, he heard from the outer office the unmistak-

THE STURDY OAK i6i

able sounds of a desk being permanently cleared of
its present incumbent's belongings.

After a while, Betty bade him a too courteous
good-by, still with that abominable new air of
gravely readjusting her old impressions of him.
And then there was nothing to do but to go home
and make ready for dinner at the Herrington's,
unless he could induce Genevieve to have an op-
portune headache.

Of course Betty had been right. Not upon his
masculine shoulders should there be laid the absurd
burden of political chagrin strong enough to break
a social engagement.

Genevieve was in her room. The library was
given over to Alys Brewster-Smith, Cousin Eme-
lene Brand, two rusty callers and the tea things.
Before the drawing-room fire, Hanna slept in
Maltese proprietorship. George longed with passion
to kick the cat.

Genevieve, as he saw through the open door, sat
by the window. She had, 'it appeared, but recently
come in. She still wore her hat and coat; she had
not even drawn off her gloves. And seeing her

1 62 THE STURDY OAK

thus, absorbed in some problem, George's sense of
his wrongs grew greater.

He had, he told himself, hurried home out of the
jar and fret of a man's day to find balm, to feel
the cool fingers of peace pressed upon hot eyelids,
to drink strengthening draughts of refreshment
from his wife's unquestioning belief, from the com-
pleteness of her absorption in him. And here she
sat thinking of something else!

Genevieve arose, a little startled as he snapped
on the lights and grunted out something which
optimism might translate into an affectionate hus-
bandly greeting. She came dutifully forward and
raised her face, still exquisite and cool from the
outer air, for her lord's home-coming kiss. That
resolved itself into a slovenly peck.

" Been out ? " asked George unnecessarily. He
tried to quell the unreasonable inclination to find
her lacking in wifely devotion because she had been
out.

" Yes. There was a meeting at the Woman's
Forum this afternoon," she answered. She was
unpinning her hat before the pier glass, and in it he

THE STURDY OAK 163

could see the reflection of her eyes turned upon his
image with a questioning look.

" The ladies seem to be having a busy day of it."

He struggled not quite successfully to be facetious
over the pretty, negligible activities of his wife's sex.
"What mighty theme engaged your attention?"

" That Miss Eliot — the real estate woman, you
know — " George stiffened into an attitude of
close attention — " spoke about the conditions under
which women are working in the mills in this city
and in the rest of the county — " Genevieve
averted her mirrored eyes from his mirrored face.
She moved toward her dressing-table.

" Oh, she did ! and is the Woman's Forum go-
ing to come to grips with the industrial monster and
bring in the millennium by the first of the year? "

But George was painfully aware that light banter
which fails to be convincingly light is but a snarl.

Genevieve colored slightly as she studied the
condition of a pair of long white gloves which she
had taken from a drawer.

" Of course the Woman's Forum is only for dis-
cussion," she said mildly. " It doesn't initiate any

i64 THE STURDY OAK

action." Then she raised her eyes to his face and
George felt his universe reel about him.

For his wife's beautiful eyes were turned upon
him, not in limpid adoration, not in perfect accept-
ance of all his views, unheard, unweighed ; but with
a question in their blue depths.

The horrid clairvoyance which harassment and
self-distrust had given him that afternoon enabled
him, he thought, to translate that look. The Eliot
woman, in her speech before the Woman's Forum,
had doubtless placed the responsibility for the con-
tinuation of those factory conditions upon the dis-
trict attorney's office, had doubtless repeated those
damn fool, impractical questions which the suffra-
gists were displaying in McMonigal's windows.

And Genevieve was asking them in her mind!
Genevieve was questioning him, his motives, his
standards, his intentions ! G€nevieve was not in-
tellectually a charming mechanical doll who would
always answer " yes " and " no '' as he pressed
the strings, and maintain a comfortable vacuity
when he was not at hand to perform the kindly act.
Genevieve was thinking on her own account.

THE STURDY OAK 165

What, he wondered angrily, as he dressed — for he
could not bring himself to ask her aid in escaping
the Herringtons and, indeed, was suddenly balky
at the thought of the intimacies of a domestic eve-
ning — what was she thinking? She was not such
an imbecile as to be unaware how large a share of
her comfortable fortune was invested in the local
industry. Why, her father had been head of the
Livingston Loomis-Ladd Collar Company, when
that dreadful fire — ! And she certainly knew that
his uncle, Martin Jafifry, was the chief stockholder
in the Jaffry-Bradshaw Company.

What was the question in Genevieve's eyes?
Was she asking if he were the knight of those
women who worked and sweated and burned, or
of her and the comfortable women of her class,
of Alys Brewster-Smith with her little cottages, of
Cousin Emelene with her little stocks, of masque-
rading Betty Sheridan whose sortie of independence
was from the safe vantage-grounds of entrenched
privilege ?

And all that evening as he watched his wife across
the crystal and the roses of the Herrington table,

i66 THE STURDY OAK

trying to interpret the question that had been in her
eyes, trying to interpret her careful silence, he real-
ized what every husband sooner or later awakes to
realize — that he had married a stranger.

He did not know her. He did not know what
ambitions, what aspirations apart from him, ruled
the spirit behind that charming surface of flesh.

Of course she was good, of course she was tender,
of course she was high-minded! But how wide-
enveloping was the cloak of her goodness? How
far did her tenderness reach out? Was her high-
mindedness of the practical or impractical variety?

From time to time, he caught her eyes in turn
upon him, with that curious little look of re-exam-
ination in their depths. She could look at him like
that! She could look at him as though appraisals
were possible from a wife to a husband!

They avoided industrial Whitewater County as
a topic when they left the Herrington's. They
talked with great animation and interest of the
people at the party. Arrived at home, George,
pleading press of work, went down into the library
while Genevieve went to bed. Carefully they post-

THE STURDY OAK 167

poned the moment of making articulate all that,
remaining unspoken, might be ignored.

It was one o'clock and he had not moved a paper
for an hour, when the library door opened.

Genevieve stood there. She had sometimes come
before when he had worked at night, to chide him
for neglecting sleep, to bring bouillon or chocolate.
But tonight she did neither.

She did not come far into the room, but standing
near the door and looking at him with a new ex-
pression — patient, tender, the everlasting eternal
look — she said : " I couldn't sleep, either. I came
down to say something, George. Don't interrupt

me " for he was coming toward her with sounds

of affectionate protest at her being out of bed.
" Don't speak ! I want to say — whatever you do,
whatever you decide — now — always — I love you.
Even if I don't agree, I love you."

She turned and went swiftly away.

George stood looking at the place where she had
stood, — this strange, new Genevieve, who, promis-
ing to love, reserved the right to judge.

CHAPTER VIII

BY MARY HEATON VORSE

The high moods of night do not always survive
the clear, cold light of day. Indeed it requires the
contribution of both man and wife to keep a high
mood in married life.

Genevieve had gone in to make her profession
of faith to her husband in a mood which touched
the high altitudes. She had gone without any con-
scious expectation of anything from him in the way
of response. She had vaguely but confidingly ex-
pected him to live up to the moment.

She had expected something beautiful, a lovely
flower of the spirit — comprehension, generosity.
Living up to the demand of the moment was
George's forte. Indeed, there were those among
his friends who felt that there were moments when
George lived up to things too brightly and too beau-
tifully. His Uncle Jaffry, for instance, had his

i68

THE STURDY OAK 169

openly skeptical moments. But George even lived
up to his uncle's skepticism. He accepted his re-
marks with charming good humor. It was his
pride that he could laugh at himself.

At the moment of Genevieve's touching speech
he lived up to exactly nothing. He didn't even
smile. He only stared at her — a stare which
said:

" Now what the devil do you mean by that ? "

Genevieve had a flicker of bitter humor when
she compared her moment of sentiment to a toy
balloon pulled down from the blue by an unsympa-
thetic hand.

The next morning, while George was still shav-
ing, the telephone rang. It was Betty.

" Can you have lunch with me at Thome's,
where we can talk? " she asked Genevieve. " And
give me a little time tomorrow afternoon? "

" Why," Genevieve responded, " I thought you
were a working girl."

There was a perceptible pause before Betty re-
plied.

"Hasn't George told you?"

170 THE STURDY OAK

" Told what ? " Genevieve inquired. " George
hasn't told me anything."

" I've left the office."

"Left! For heaven's sake, why?"

Betty's mind worked swiftly.

" Better treat it as a joke," was her decision.
There was no pause before she answered.

" Oh, trouble with the boss."

" You'll get over it. You're always having
trouble with Penny.

"Oh," said Betty, "it's not with Penny this
time."

"Not with George?"

" Yes, with George," Betty answered. " Did you
think one couldn't quarrel with the noblest of his
sex? Well, one can."

" Oh, Betty, I'm sorry." Genevieve's tone was
slightly reproachful.

"Well, I'm not," said Betty. "I like my
present job better. It was a good thing he fired
me.

" Fired you ! George fired you? "

" Sure thing," responded Betty blithely. " I can't

THE STURDY OAK 171

stand here talking all day. What I want to know
is, can I see you at lunch ? "

" Yes — why, yes, of course," said Genevieve,
dazedly. Then she hung up the receiver and stared
into space.

George, beautifully dressed, tall and handsome,
now emerged from his room. For once his adoring
wife failed to notice that in appearance he rivaled
the sun god. She had one thing she wanted to
know, and she wanted to know it badly. It was,

"Why did you fire Betty Sheridan?"

She asked this in the insulting " point of the
bayonet " tone which angry equals use to one an-
other the world over.

Either question or tone would have been enough
to have put George's already sensitive nerves on
edge. Both together were unbearable. It was,
when you came down to it, the most awkward ques-
tion in the world.

Why, indeed, had he fired Betty Sheridan? He
hadn't really given himself an account of the in-
ward reasons yet. The episode had been too dis-
turbing; and it was George's characteristic to put

172 THE STURDY OAK

off looking on unpleasant facts as long as possible.
Had he been really hard up, which he never had
been, he would undoubtedly have put away, un-
opened, the bills he couldn't pay. Life was already
presenting him with the bill of yesterday's ill humor,
and he was not yet ready to add up the amount.
He hid himself now behind the austerity of the
offended husband.

" My dear," he inquired in his turn, " don't you
think that you had best leave the details of my office
to me?"

He knew how lame this was, and how inadequate,
before Genevieve replied.

" Betty Sheridan is not a detail of your office.
She's one of my best friends, and I want to know
why you fired her. I dare say she was exasperating ;
but I can't see any reason why you should have done
it. You should have let her leave."

It was Betty, with that lamentable lack of delicacy
which George had pointed out to her, who had not
been ready to leave.

" You will have to let me be the judge of what I
should or should not have done," said George.

THE STURDY OAK 173

This piece of advice Genevieve ignored.

" Why did you send her away? " she demanded.

" I sent her away, if you want to know, for her
insolence and her damned bad taste. If you think —
working in my office as she was — it's decent or
proper on her part to be active in a campaign that
is against me "

" You mean because she's a suffragist? You sent
her away for that! Why, really, that's tyranny!
It's like my sending away some one working for me
for her beliefs "

They stood staring at each other, not question-
ingly as they had yesterday, but as enemies, — the
greater enemies that they so loved each other.

Because of that each word of unkindness was a
doubled-edged sword. They quarreled. It was the
first time that they had seen each other without
illusion. They had been to each other the ideal,
the lover, husband, wife.

Now, in the dismay of his amazement in find-
ing himself quarrehng with the perfect wife, a
vagrant memory came to George that he had heard
that Genevieve had a hot temper.

174 THE STURDY OAK

She certainly had. He didn't notice how hand-
some she looked kindled with anger. He only knew
that the rose garden in which they lived was being
destroyed by their angry hands ; that the very foun-
dation of the life they had been leading was being
undermined.

The time of mirage and glamour was over. He
had ceased being a hero and an ideal, and why?
Because, forgetting his past life, his record, his
achievement, Genevieve obstinately insisted on iden-
tifying him with one single mistake. He was will-
ing to concede it was a mistake. She had not only
identified him with it, but she had called him a
number of wounding things.

" Tyrant " was the least of them, and, worse than
that, she had, in a very fury of temper, told him
that he " needn't take that pompous " — yes, " pom-
pous " had been her unpleasant word — " tone " with
her, when he had inquired, more in sorrow than in
anger, if this were really his Genevieve speaking.

There was a pause in their hostilities. They
looked at each other aghast. Aghast, they had per-
ceived the same awful truth. Each saw that love

,«&,el<-..r^ « <

"You mean because she's a suffragist? You sent her away
for that? Why, really, that's tyranny!"

THE STURDY OAK 175

in the other's heart was dead, and that things never
could be the same again. So they stood look-
ing down this dark gulf, and the light of anger
died.

In a toneless voice : " We mustn't let Cousin
Emelene and Alys hear us quarreling," said George.
And Genevieve answered, " They've gone down to
breakfast."

The two ladies were seated at table.

" We heard you two love birds cooing and billing,
and thought we might as well begin," said Alys
Brewster-Smith. " Regularity is of the highest
importance in bringing up a child."

Cousin Emelene was reading the Sentinel.
George's quick eye glanced at the headlines :

Candidate Remington Heckled by Suffragists.
Ask Him Leading Questions.

" Why, dear me," she remarked, her kind eyes
on George, " it's perfectly awful, isn't it, that they
break the laws that way just for a little more money.
But I don't see why they want to annoy dear George.
They ought to be glad they are going to get a district
attorney who'll put all those things straight. I

176 THE STURDY OAK

think it's very silly of them to ask him, don't you,
Genevieve ? "

" Let me see," said Genevieve, taking the paper.

" All he's got to do, anyway, is to answer," pur-
sued Cousin Emelene.

" Yes, that's all," replied Genevieve, her melan-
choly gaze on George. Yesterday she would have
had Emelene's childlike faith. But this stranger,
who, for a trivial and tyrannical reason, had sent
away Betty — how would he act?

" They showed these right opposite your win-
dows ? " she questioned.

" Yes," he returned. " Our friend Mrs. Herring-
ton did it herself. It was the first course of our
dinner. If you think that's good taste "

" I would expect it of her," said Alys Brewster-
Smith.

" But it makes it so easy for George," Emelene
repeated. " They'll know now what sort of a man
he is. Little children at work, just to make a little
more money — it's awful!"

" Talking about money, George," said Alys,
" have you seen to my houses yet ? "

THE STURDY OAK 177

" Not yet," replied the harassed George. " You'll
have to excuse my going into the reasons now.
I'm late as it is."

His voice had not the calm he would have wished
for. As he took his departure, he heard Alys
saying,

" If you'll let me, my dear, I'd adore helping you
about the housekeeping. I don't want to stay here
and be a burden. If you'll just turn it over to me,
I could cut your housekeeping expenses in half."

" Damn the women," was the unchivalrous
thought that rose to George's lips.

One would have supposed that trouble had fol-
lowed closely enough on George Remington's trail,
but now he found it awaiting him in his office.

Usually, Penny was the late one. It was this
light-hearted young man's custom to blow in with
so engaging an expression and so cheerful a manner
that any comment on his unpunctuality was impos-
sible. Today, instead of a gay-hearted young man,
he looked more like a sentencing judge.

What he wanted to know was,

"What have you done to Betty Sheridan? Do

178 THE STURDY OAK

you mean to say that you had the nerve to send
her away, send her out of my office without con-
sulting me — and for a reason like that? How did
you think I was going to feel about it?"

" I didn't think about you," said George.

" You bet you didn't. You thought about num-
ber one and your precious vanity. Why, if one
were to separate you from your vanity, one couldn't
see you when you were going down the street. Go
on, make a frock coat gesture 1 Play the brilliant
but outraged young district attorney. Do you
know what it was to do a thing of that kind — to fire
a girl because she didn't agree with you ? "

" It wasn't because she didn't agree with me,"
George interrupted, with heat.

" It was the act of a cad," Penny finished. " Look
here, young man, I'm going to tell you a few plain
truths about yourself. You're not the sort of person
that you think you are. You've deceived yourself
the way other people are deceived about you — by
your exterior. But inside of that good-looking
carcass of yours there's a brain composed of cheese.
You weren't only a cad to do it — you were a fool ! "

THE STURDY UAK 179

" You can't use that tone to me ! " cried
George.

"Oh, can't I just? By Jove, it's things like
that that make one wake up. Now I know why
women have a passion for suffrage. I never knew
before," Penny went on, with more passion th^n
logic. " You had a nerve to make that statemept
of yours. You're a fine example of chivalry. Yotj
let loose a few things when you wrote that fool
statement, but you did a worse trick when you fired
Betty Sheridan. God, you're a pinhead — from the
point of view of mere tactics. Sometimes I wonder
whether you've any brain."

George had turned white with anger.

" That'll just about do," he remarked.

" Oh, no, it won't," said Penny. " It won't do
at all. I'm not going to remain in a firm where
things like this can happen. I wouldn't risk my
, reputation and my future. You're going to do the
decent thing. You're going to Betty Sheridan and
tell her what you think of _ yourself. She won't
come back, I suppose, but you might ask her
to do that, too. And now I'm going out, to give

i8o THE STURDY OAK

you time to think this over. And tonight you can
tell me what you've decided. And then I'll tell you
whether I'm going to dissolve our partnership.
Your temper's too bad to decide now. Maybe when
you've done that she won't treat me like an un-
savory stranger."

He left, and George sat down to gloomy reflec-
tion.

To do him justice, the idea of apologizing to
Betty had already occurred to him. If he put off
the day of reckoning, when the time came he would
pay handsomely. He realized that there was no use
in wasting energy and being angry with Penny.
He looked over the happenings of the last few hours
and the part he had played in them, and what he
saw failed to please him. He saw himself being
advised by Doolittle to concentrate on the Erie Oval.
He heard him urging him not to be what Doolittle
called unneighborly. The confiding words of Cousin
Emelene rang in his ears.

He saw himself, in a fit of ill-temper, discharging
Betty. He saw Genevieve, lovely and scornful,
urging him to be less pompous. All this, he had

THE STURDY OAK i8i

to admit, he had brought on himself. Why should
he have been so angry at these questions? Again
Emelene's remark echoed in his ear. He had
only to answer them— and he was going to con-
centrate on the Erie Oval!

There came a knock on the door, and a breezy
young woman demanded,

" D'you want a stenographer?"

George wanted a stenographer, and wanted one
badly. He put from him the whole vexed question
in the press of work, and by lunch time he made up
his mind to have it out with Betty. There was no
use putting it ofif, and he knew that he could have
no peace with himself until he did. He felt very
tired — as though he had been doing actual
physical work. He thought of yesterday as
a land of lost content. But he couldn't find
Betty.

He bent his steps toward home, and as he did so
affection for Genevieve flooded his heart. He so
wanted yesterday back — things as they had been.
He so wanted her love and her admiration. He
wanted to put his tired head on her shoulder. He

i82 THE STURDY OAK

couldn't bear, not for another moment, to be at
odds with her.

He wondered what she had been doing, and how
she had spent the morning. He imagined her cry-
ing her heart out. He leaped up the steps and ran
up to his room. In it was Alys Brewster-Smith.
She started slightly.

" I was just looking for some cold cream," she
explained.

"Where's Genevieve?" George asked.

" Oh, she's out," Alys replied casually. " She
left a note for you."

The note was a polite and noncommittal line in-
forming George that Genevieve would not be back
for lunch. He felt as though a lump of ice
replaced his heart. His disappointment was the
desperate disappointment of a small boy.

He went back to the gloomy office and worked
through the interminable day. Late in the after-
noon Mr. Doolittle lounged heavily in.

" Have some gum, George? " he inquired, insert-
ing a large piece in his own mouth.

He chewed rhythmically for a space. George

THE STURDY OAK 183

waited. He knew that chewing gum was not the
ultimate object of Mr. Doohttle's visit.

" Don't women beat the Dutch ? " he inquired
at last. " Yes sir, mister ; they do ! "

" What's up now ? " George inquired. " The suf-
fragists again ? "

"Nope; not on the face of it they ain't. It's
the Woman's Forum that's doin' this. They've
got a sweet little idea. ' Seein' Whitewater Sweat '
they call it.

" They're goin' around in bunches of twos, or
mebbe blocks o' five, seein' all the sights; an' you
know women ain't reasonable, an' you can't reason
with them. They're goin' to find a pile o' things
they won't like in this little burg o' ours, all right, all
right. An' they'll want to have things changed right
off. I want to see things changed m'self. I'd like
to, but them things take time, an' that's what women
won't understand.

" Jimminee, I've heard of towns all messed up
and candidates ruined just because the women got
wrought up over tenement-house an' fire laws an'
truck like that. Yes sir, they're out seein' White-

1 84 THE STURDY OAK

water this minut, or will be if you can't divert their
minds. Call 'em off, George, if you can. Get 'em
fussy about sumpen else."

" Why, what have I to do with it ? " George in-
quired.

" Well, I didn't know but what you might have
sumpen," said Mr. Doolittle mildly. "It's that
young lady that works here. Miss Sheridan, an*
your wife what's organizin' it. Planning it all out
to Thome's at lunch they was, an' Heally was
sittin' at the next table and beats it to me. You
can see for yerself what a hell of a mess they'll
make!"

CHAPTER IX

BY ALICE DUER MILLER

It was a relief to both men when at this point
the door of the office opened and Martin Jaffry
entered.

Not since the unfortunate anti-suffrage statement
of George's had Uncle Martin dropped in like this.
George, looking at him with that first swift glance
that often predetermines a whole interview, made
up his mind that bygones were to be bygones. He
greeted his uncle with the warmest cordiality.

" Well, George," said Uncle Martin, " how are
things going? "

" I'm going to be elected, if that's what you
mean," answered George.

Doolittle gave a snort. "Indeed, are ye?" said
he. " As a friend and well-wisher, I'm sure I'm
delighted to hear the news."

185

1 86 THE STURDY OAK

" Do I understand that you have your doubts,
Mr. Doolittle?" Jaffry inquired mildly.

" There's two things we need and need badly,
Mr. Jaffry," said Doolittle. "One's money "

" A small campaign contribution would not be
rejected?"

" But there's something we need more than money
— and God knows I never expected to say them
words — and that's common sense."

" Good," said Uncle Martin, " I have plenty of
that, too ! "

" Then for the love of Mike pass some of it on
to this precious nephew of yours."

" What seems to be the matter? "

" It's them women," said Doolittle.

Uncle Martin turned inquiringly to George:
" The tender flowers ? " he suggested.

" Look here. Uncle Martin," said George, who
had had a good deal of this sort of thing to bear,
" I don't understand you. Do you believe in woman
suffrage?"

Uncle Martin contemplated a new crumpling of
his long-suffering cap before he answered.

THE STURDY OAK 187

" Yes and no, George. I believe in it in the
same way that I believe in old age and death. I
can't avoid them by denying their existence."

" But you fight against them, and put them off
as long as you can."

" But I yield a little to them, too, George. What
is it? Has Genevieve become a convert to
suffrage ? "

" Has Genevieve — ^has my wife "

Then George remembered that his uncle was an
older man and that chivalry is not hmited to the
treatment of the weaker sex.

" No," he said with a calm hardly less magnifi-
cent than the tempest would have been, " no. Uncle
Martin, Genevieve has not become a suffragist."

" Well," said Doolittle rising, as if such things
were hardly worth his valuable time, " I fail to see
the difference between a suffragette an' a woman
who goes pokin' her nose into what "

" You're speaking of my wife, Mr. Doolittle,"
Said George, with a significant lighting of the eye.

" Speakin' in general," said Doolittle.

Uncle Martin was interested.

1 88 THE STURDY OAK

" Has Genevieve been — well, we won't say poking
the nose — but taking a responsible civic interest
where it would be better if she didn't? "

" It seems," answered George, casting an angry
glance at his campaign manager, " that Mr. Doo-
little has heard from a friend of his who overheard
a conversation between Betty Sheridan and my
wife at luncheon. From this he inferred that the
two were planning an investigation of some of the
city's problems."

Uncle Martin looked relieved.

" Oh, your wife and your stenographer. That
can be stopped, I suppose, without undue exertion."

" Betty is no longer my stenographer."

"Left, has she?" said Jaffry. "I had an idea
she would not stay with you long."

This intimation was not agreeable to George.
He would have liked to explain that Miss Sheridan's
departure had been dictated by the will of the head
of the firm; in fact he opened his mouth to do so.
But the remembrance that this would entail a long
and wearisome exposition of his reasons caused
him to remain silent, and his uncle went on:

THE STURDY OAK 189

" Well, anyhow, you can get Genevieve to drop
it."

If Doolittle had not been there, George would
have been glad to discuss with his uncle, who had,
after all, a sort of worldly shrewdness, how far a
man is justified in controlling his wife's opinions.
But before an audience now a trifle unsympathetic,
he could not resist the temptation of making the
gesture of a man magnificently master in his own
house.

He smiled quite grandly. " I think I can promise
that," he said.

Doolittle got up slowly, bringing his jaws to-
gether in a relentless bite on the unresisting gum.

" Well," he said, " that's all there is to it." And
he added significantly as he reached the door, "If
you kin do it ! "

When the campaign manager had gone, Uncle
Martin asked very, very gently: "You don't feel
any doubt of being able to do it, do you, George? "

" About my ability to control — I mean influence,
my wife? I feel no doubt at all."

" And Penfield, I suppose, can tackle Betty? You

I90 THE STURDY OAK

won't mind my saying that of the two I think your
partner has the harder job."

A slight cloud appeared upon the brow of the
candidate.

" I don't feel inclined to ask any favor of Penny
just at present," he said haughtily. " Has it ever
struck you, Uncle Martin, that Penny has an
unduly emotional, an almost feminine type of
mind?"

" No," said the other, " it hasn't, but that is per-
haps because I have never been sure just what the
feminine type of mind is."

"You know what I mean," answered George,
trying to conceal his annoyance at this sort of petty
quibbling. " I mean he is too personal, over-ex-
citable, irrational and very hard to deal with."

" Dear me," said Jafifry. " Is Genevieve like
that?"

" Genevieve," replied her husband loyally, " is
much better poised than most women, but — yes, —
even she — all women are more or less like that."

" All women and Penny. Well, George, you
have my sympathy. An excitable partner, an irra-

THE STURDY OAK 191

tional stenographer, and a wife that's very hard to
deal with ! "

" I never said Genevieve was hard to deal with,"
George almost shouted.

" My mistake — thought you did," answered his
uncle, now moving rapidly away. " Let me know
the result of the interview, and we'll talk over ways
and means." And he shut the door briskly behind
him.

George walked to the window, with his hands in
his pockets. He always liked to look out while he
turned over grave questions in his mind; but this
comfort was now denied to him, for he could not
help being distracted by the voiceless speech still
relentlessly turning its pages in the opposite window.

The heading now was :

DOES THE FIFTY-FOUR-HOUR-A-WEEK
LAW APPLY TO FLOWERS?

He flung himself down on his chair with an ex-
clamation. He knew he had to think carefully
about something which he had never considered
before, and that was his wife's character.

Of course he liked to think about Genevieve-^

192 THE STURDY OAK

of her beauty, her abilities, her charms; and par-
ticularly he liked to think about her love for him.

A week ago he would have met the present sit-
uation very simply. He would have put his arm
about her and said : " My darling, I think I'd a httle
rather you dropped this sort of thing for the pres-
ent." And that would have been enough.

But he knew it would not be enough now. He
would have to have a reason, a case.

" Heavens," he thought, " imagine having to talk
to one's wife as if she were the lawyer for the other
side."

He did not notice that he was reproaching Gene-
vieve for being too impersonal, too unemotional
and not irrational enough.

When he went home at five, he had thought it
out. He put his head into the sitting-room, where
Alys was ensconced behind the tea-kettle.

" Come in, George dear," she called graciously,
" and let me give you a really good cup of tea.
It's some I've just ordered for you, and I think
you'll find it an improvement on what you've been
accustomed to,"

THE STURDY OAK 193

George shut the door again, pretending he had
not heard ; but he had had time enough to note that
dear Httle Eleanor was building houses out of his
most treasured books.

The memory of his quarrel with his wife had
been partly obliterated by memories of so many
other quarrels during the day that it was only when
he was actually standing in her room that he remem-
bered how very bitter their parting had been.

He stood looking at her doubtfully, and it was
she who came forward and put her arms about him.
They clung to each other like two children who
have been frightened by a nightmare.

" We mustn't quarrel again, George," she said.
" I've had a real, true, old-fashioned pain in my
heart all day. But I think I understand better now
than I did. I lunched with Betty and she made
me see."

" What did Betty make you see? " asked George
nervously, for he had not perfect confidence in Miss
Sheridan's visions.

" That it was all a question of efficiency. She
said that in business a man's stenographer is just

194 THE STURDY OAK

an instrument to make his work easier, and if for
any reason at all that instrument does not suit him
he is justified in getting rid of it, and in finding
one that does."

" Betty is very generous," he said coldly. He
wanted to hear his wife say that she had not thought
him pompous; it was very hard to be thankful for
a mere ethical rehabilitation.

Part of his thought-out plan was that Genevieve
must herself tell him of the Woman's Forum's in-
vestigation ; it would not do for him to let her know
he had heard of it through a political eavesdropper.
So after a moment he added casually:

" And what else did Betty have to say ? "

" Nothing much."

His heart sank. Was Genevieve becoming un-
candid ?

" Nothing else," he said. " Just to justify me
in your eyes ? "

She hesitated, " No, that was not quite all, but
it is too early to talk about it yet."

" Anything that interests you, my dear, I should
like to hear about from the beginning."

THE STURDY OAK 195

Perhaps Genevieve was not so unemotional after
all, for at this expression of his affection, her eyes
filled with tears.

" I long to tell you," she said. " I only hesitated
on your account, but of course I want all your help
and advice. It's this : There seems to be no doubt
that the conditions under which women are work-
ing in our factories are hideous — dangerous — the
law is broken with perfect impunity. I know you
can't act on rumors and hearsay. Even the in-
spectors don't give out the truth. And so we are
going to persuade the Woman's Forum to abandon
its old policy of mere discussion.

" We — Betty and I — are going to get the mem-
bers for once to act — to make an investigation; so
that the instant you come into the office you will
have complete information at your disposal — facts,
and facts and facts on which you can act."

She paused and looked eagerly at her husband,
who remained silent. Seeing this she went on :

" I know what you're thinking. I thought of it
myself. Am I justified in using my position in the
Woman's Forum to further your political career?

196 THE STURDY OAK

Well, my answer is, it isn't your political career,
only; it's truth and justice that will be furthered."

Here in the home there was no voiceless speech
to make the view intolerable, and George moved
away from his wife and walked to the window.
He looked out on his own peaceful trees and lawn,
and on Hanna, like a tiger in the jungle, stalking
a competent little sparrow.

A temptation was assailing George. Suppose he
did put his opposition to this investigation on a
high and mighty ground? Suppose he announced
a moral scruple? But no, he cast Satan behind
him.

" Genevieve," he said, turning sharply toward her,
"this question puts our whole attitude to a test.
If you and I are two separate individuals, with
different responsibilities, different interests, dif-
ferent opinions, then we ought to be consistent ; that
ought to mean economic independence of each other,
and equal suffrage ; it means that husband and wife
may become business competitors and political
opponents.

" But if, as you know I believe, a man and woman

THE STURDY OAK 197

who love each other are one, are a unit as far as
society is concerned, why then our interests are
identical, and it is simply a question of which of
us two is better able to deal with any particular
situation."

" But that is what I believe, too, George."

" I hoped it was, dear ; I know it used to be.
Then you must let me act for you in this
matter."

"Yes, in the end; but an investigation "

" My darling, politics is not an ideal ; it is a prac-
tical human institution. Just at present, from the
political point of view, such an investigation would
do me incalculable harm."

"George!"

He nodded. " It would probably lose me the
election."

"But why?"

" Genevieve, am I your political representative or
not?"

" You are," she smiled at him, " and my dear love
as well ; but may I not even know why ? "

" If you dismissed the cook, and I summoned

198 THE STURDY OAK

you before me and bade you give me your reasons
for such an action, would you not feel in your heart
that I was disputing your judgment? "

She looked at him honestly. " Yes, I should."
" And I would not do such a discourteous thing
to you. In the home you are absolute. Whatever
you do, whatever you decide, is right. I would not
dream of questioning. Will you not give me the
same confidence in my special department? "

There was a short pause ; then Genevieve held out
her hand.

" Yes, George," she said, " I will, but on one

condition "

" / did not make conditions, Genevieve."
" You do not have to, my dear. You know that
I am really your representative in the house; that
I am really always thinking of your wishes. You
must do the same as my political representative.
I mean, if I am not to do this work myself, you
must do it for me."

" Even if I consider it unwise ? "

" Unwise to protect women and children ? "

" Genevieve," he said seriously, as one who con-

THE STURDY OAK 199

fides something not always confided to women, " en-
forcing law sometimes does harm."

" But an investigation "

" That's where you are ignorant, my dear. If
an investigation is made, especially if the women
mix themselves up in it, then we shall have no
choice but enforcement."

She had sunk down on her sofa, but now she
sprang up. " And you don't mean to enforce the
law in respect of women? Is that why you don't
want the investigation ? "

" Not at all. You are most unjust. You are
most illogical, Genevieve. All I am asking is that
the whole question should not be taken up at this
moment — ^just before election."

" But this is the only moment when we can find
out whether or not you are a candidate who will
do what we want."

" We, Genevieve ! Who do you mean by ' we ' ?

She stared for a second at him, her eyes growing
large and dark with astonishment.

"Oh, George," she gasped finally, "I think I
meant women when I said ' we.' George, I'm

200 THE STURDY OAK

afraid I'm a suffragist. And oh," she added, with
a sort of wail, " I don't want to be, I don't want
to be!"

" Damn Betty Sheridan," exclaimed George.
" This is all her doing."

His wife shook her head. " No," she said, " it
wasn't Betty who made me see."

"Who was it?"

" It was you, George."

" I don't understand you."

" You made me see why women want to vote
for themselves. How can you represent me, when
we disagree fundamentally?"

" How can we disagree fundamentally when we
love each other ? "

" You mean that because we love each other, I
must think as you do? "

"What else could I mean, darling?"

" You might have meant that you would think
as I do."

George glanced at her in deep offense.

" We have indeed drifted far apart," he said.

At this moment there was a knock at the door,

THE STURDY OAK aAi

and the news was conveyed to George that Mr.
Evans was downstairs asking to see him.

" Oh dear," said Genevieve, " it seems as if we
never could get a moment by ourselves nowadays.
What does Penny want ? "

" He wants to tell me whether he intends to -dis-
solve partnership or not."

Any fear that his wife had disassociated herself
from his interests should have been dispelled by the
tone in which she exclaimed : " Dissolve partner-
ship! Penny? Well, I never in my life! Where
would Penny be without you, I should like to
know! He must be crazy."

These words made George feel happier than any-
thing that had happened to him throughout this
day. His self-esteem began to revive.

" I think Penny has been a little hasty," he said,
judicially but not unkindly. " He lost all self-
control when he heard I had let Betty go."

" Isn't that like a man," said Genevieve, " to
throw away his whole future just because he loses
his temper? "

George did not directly answer this question, and

202 THE STURDY OAK

his wife went on. " However, it will be all right.
He has seen Betty this afternoon, and she won't
let him do anything foolish."

George glanced at her. " You mean that Betty
will prevent his leaving the firm ? "

" Of course she will."

George walked to the door.

" I seem to owe a good deal to my former stenog-
rapher," he said, " my wife, my partner ; next, per-
haps it will be my election."

CHAPTER X

BY ETHEL WATTS MUMFORD

PennYj pacing the drawing-room with panther-
esque strides, came to a tense halt as Remington
entered.

" Well? " he said, his eyes hard, his unwelcoming
hands thrust deep into his pockets.

That identical " well " with its uptilt of question
had been on George's tongue. It was a monosyllable
that demanded an answer. Penny had got ahead
of him, forced him, as it were, into the witness
chair, and he resented it.

" Seems to me," he began hotly, " that you were
the one who was going to make the statements —
' whether or no,' I believe, we were to continue in
partnership."

" Perhaps," retorted Penny, with the air of

allowing no great importance to that angle of the

argument, " but what I want to know is, are you

203

204 THE STURDY OAK

going to be a square man, and own up you were
peeved into being a tyrant? And when you've
done that, are you going to tell Betty, and apolo-
gize ? "

George hesitated, trapped between his irritation
and the still small voice.

" Look here," he said, with that amiable suavity
that had won him many a concession, " you know
well enough I don't want to hurt Betty's feelings.
If she feels that way about it, of course I'll
apologize."

His partner looked at him in blank amazement.

" Gad ! " he exclaimed as if examining a particu-
larly fine specimen of some rare beetle, " what a
bounder."

" Meaning me? " snapped George.

" Don't dare to quibble. Look me in the eye."

There was a third degree fatality about the
usually debonair Penny that exacted obedience.
George unwillingly looked him in the eye, and had
a ghastly feeling of having his suddenly realized
smallness X-rayed.

"You know damned well you acted like a cad,"

THE STURDY OAK 205

Penny continued, " and I want to know, for all
our sakes, if you're man enough to own it? "

George's fundamental honesty mastered him.
Anger died from his eyes. His clenched hands
relaxed and began an unconscious and nervous
exploration for a cigarette.

" Since you put it that way," he said, " and it
happens that my conscience agrees with you — I'll
go you. I was a cad, and I'll tell Betty so. Con-
found it ! " he growled, " I don't know what's come
over me these days. I've got to get a grip on
myself."

" You bet you have," said Penny, hauling his
fists from his trousers as if with an effort. Then
he grinned. " Betty said you would."

George's eyes darkened.

" And I'll tell you now," Penny went on, " since
you've turned out at least half-decent, Betty'll let
you off that apology thing. She wasn't the one who
was exacting it — not she. / couldn't stand for your
highfalutin excuses for being — well, never mind —
we all get our off days. But don't you get off again
like that if "

2o6 THE STURDY OAK

Penny hesitated. " If you want me for a
partner," which seemed the obvious conclusion,
was tame. " If you want to hang on to any one's
respect," he finished.

" Say, though," he murmured, " Betty'll give me
' what for ' for drubbing you. She actually took
your side — said — oh, never mind — tried to make
me think of her just as if she was any old Mamie-
the-stenog — tried to prune out personal feeling.
By Jove," he ruminated, " that girl's a corker ! "

He raised forgiving eyes from his contemplation
of the rug.

" Well, old man, blow me to a Scotch and soda,
and I'll be going. Dinged if it wouldn't have
broken me all up to have busted with you, even if
you are a box of prunes. Shake."

George shook, but he was far from happy. What
he had gained in peace of mind he had lost in self-
conceit. His resentment against the pinch of cir-
cumstance was deepening to cancerous vindictive-
ness.

As Pennington left with a cheery good-by and a
final half-cynical word of advice " to get onto him-

THE STURDY OAK 207

self " George mounted the stairs slowly and came
face to face with Genevieve, obviously in wait for
him.

" What happened ? " she inquired, with an
anxious glance at his corrugated brow.

George did not feel in a mood to describe his
retreat, if not defeat.

" Oh, nothing. We had a highball. I think I
made him — well — it's all right."

" There, I knew Betty'd make him see reason,"
she smiled. " I'm awfully glad. I've a real respect
for Penny's judgment after all, you know."

" Meaning, you have your doubts about mine."

" No, meaning only just what I said — just that.
By the way, George, I wish you'd take time to look
into Alys' real estate. Somebody ought to, and if
you're really representing her "

" Oh, good heavens ! " he exclaimed impatiently,
angered by her swift transition from his own to
another's affairs. " I can't ! I simply can't !
Haven't you any conception of how busy I am? "

" I know, dear ; I do know. But something must
be done. The Health Department," she explained,

2o8 THE STURDY OAK

" has sent in complaint after complaint, and Miss
Eliot simply won't handle the property unless she's
allowed to spend a lot setting things to rights.
Alys says it's absurd; none of the other property
owners out there are doing anything, and she won't.
So, nobody's looking after it, and somebody
should."

" Who told you all this ? " he demanded. " Miss
E. Eliot, I suppose."

His wife nodded. " And she's right," she
added.

" Well, perhaps she is," he allowed. " I'll get
Allen to act as her agent again. He's in with all
the politicians; he ought to be able to stall off the
department."

The words slipped out before he realized their
import, but at Genevieve's wide stare of amaze-
ment he flushed crimson. " I mean — lots of these
complaints are really mere red tape; some self-im-
portant employee is trying to look busy. A little
investigation usually puts that straight."

" Of course," she acquiesced, and he breathed a
sigh of relief. " That happens, too, but Miss Eliot

THE STURDY OAK 209

says that the conditions out there are really dread-
ful."

" I'll talk to Allen," said George with an affecta-
tion of easy dismissal of the subject.

But Genevieve's mind appeared to have grown
suddenly persistent. At dinner she again brought
up the subject, this time directing her troubled gaze
and troubling words at her guest.

" Alys," she said abruptly, " I really think you
ought to go out to Kentwood — to see about your
property out there, I mean."

Mrs. Brewster-Smith looked up, rolling her large
eyes in frank amazement.

" Go out there? What for? It isn't the sort of
a district a lady cares to be seen in, I'm told; and,
besides, George is looking after that for me. He
understands such matters, and I frankly own /
don't. Business makes me quite dizzy," she added
with a flash of very white teeth.

Genevieve hesitated, then went to the point.

" But you must advise with your agent, Alys.
The property is yours."

Alys raised sharply penciled brows.

2IO THE STURDY OAK

" I have utter confidence in George," she an-
swered in a tone of finality that brought an adoring
look from Emelene, and her usual Boswellian
echo : " Of course."

George squirmed uneasily. Such a vote of confi-
dence implied accepted responsibility, and he ac-
knowledged to himself that he wanted to and would
dodge the unwelcome burden. He turned a benign
Jovian expression on Mrs. Brewster-Smith and con-
descended to explain.

" I have considered what is best for you, and I
will myself see Allen and request him to take your
real-estate affairs in charge again. Neither Samp-
son nor — er — Eliot is, I think, advisable for your
best interests."

At the mention of the last name Genevieve's ex-
pressive face stretched to speak; then she closed
her lips with self -controlled determination. Mrs.
Brewster-Smith looked at her host in scandalized
amazement.

" But I told you," she almost whimpered, " that
his wife is simply impossible."

George smiled tolerantly. " But his wife isn't

THE STURDY OAK 211

doing the business. It's the business, not the social
interests, we have to consider.

" Oh, but she is in the business," Alys explained.
" I think it's because she's jealous of him; she wants
to be around the office and watch him."

Genevieve interposed. " Mrs. Allen owns a lot
of land herself, and she looks after it. It seems
quite natural to me."

" But she has a husband," Alys rebuked.

" Yes," agreed Genevieve, " but she probably
married him for a husband, not a business
agent."

George felt the reins of the situation slipping
from him, so he jerked the curb of conversation.

"We are beside the issue," he said in his most
legal manner. " The fact is that Allen knows more
about the Kentwood district and the factory values
than any one else, and I feel it my duty to advise
Alys to leave her affairs in his hands. I'll see him
for you in the morning."

He turned to Alys with a return of tolerantly
protective inflection in his voice.

Genevieve shrugged, a faint ghost of a shrug.

212 THE STURDY OAK

Had George been less absorbed in his own mental
discomforts, he would have discovered there and
then that the matter of his speech, not the nfanner
of his delivery, was what held his wife's attention.
No longer could rounded periods and eloquent
sophistry hide from her his thoughts and in-
tentions.

A telephone call interrupted the meal. He an-
swered it with relief, bowing a hurried, self-impor-
tant excuse to the ladies. But the voice that came
over the wire was not modulated in tones of flattery.

" Say," drawled the campaign manager, " you'd
better get a hump on, and come over here to head-
quarters. There's a couple of gents here who want
a word with you."

The tone was ominous, and George stiffened.
" Very well, I'll be right over. But you can pretty
well tell them where I stand on the main issues.
Who's at headquarters ? "

A snort of disgust greeted the inquiry. The snort
told George that seasoned campaigners did not use
the telephone with such casual lack of circumspec-
tion. The words were in like mannep- enlightening.

THE STURDY OAK 213

" Well, there might be Mr. Julius Caesar, and
then again Mr. George Washington might drop in.
What I'm putting you wise to," he added sharply,
" is that you'd better get on to your job."

There was a click as of a receiver hung up with
a jerk, and a subdued giggle that testified to the
innocent attention of the telephone operator.

With but a pale reflection of his usual courtesy
the harassed candidate left the bosom of his family.
No sooner had he taken his departure than the
bosom heaved.

"My dear girl," said Alys, "if you take that
tone with your husband you'll never hold him —
never. Men won't stand for it. You're only hurt-
ing yourself."

"What tone?" Genevieve inquiied as she rose
calmly and led the way to the drawing-room.

" I mean " — Mrs. Brewster-Smith slipped a firm,
white hand across Genevieve's shoulders — " you
shouldn't try to force issues. It looks as if you
didn't have confidence in your husband, and men,
to do and be their best, must feel perfect trust from
the woman they love. You don't mind my being

214 THE STURDY OAK

so frank, dear, but we women must help one an-
other — by our experience and our intuitions."

Genevieve looked at her. Oblique angles had be-
come irritatingly fascinating. " I'm beginning to
think so more and more," she replied.

" It's for your own good, dear," Alys smiled.

" Yes," Genevieve agreed. " I understand.
Things that hurt are often for our good, aren't
they? We have to be made to realize facts really
to know them."

"Coflfee, dear?" inquired Alys, assuming the
duties of hostess.

Genevieve shook her head. " No. I find I've
been rather wakeful of late: perhaps it's coffee.
Excuse me. I must telephone."

A moment later she returned beaming.

" I have borrowed a car for tomorrow, and I
want you and Emelene to come with me for a
little spin. We ought to have a bright day; the
night is wonderful. Poor George," she sighed, " I
wish he didn't have to be away so much."

" His career is yours, you know," kittenishly bro-
midic, Emelene comforted her.

THE STURDY OAK 215

The following day fulfilled the promise of its
predecessor. Clear and balmy, it invited to the
outer world, and it was with pleased anticipation
that Genevieve's guests prepared for the promised
outing. Genevieve glanced anxiously into her
gold mesh bag. The motor was hired, not bor-
rowed.

She had permitted herself this one white lie.

She ushered her guests into the tonneau and took
her place beside the chauffeur. Their first few stops
were for such prosaic purchases as the household
made necessary ; there was a pause at the post office,
another at the Forum, where Genevieve left two
highly disgruntled women waiting for her while
with a guilty sense of teasing her prey she pro-
longed her business. The sight of their stiffened
figures and averted faces when she returned to them
kindled a new amusement.

At last they were settled comfortably, and the car
turned toward the suburbs.

The town streets were passed and lines of villa
homes thinned. The ornate colonial gates of the
Country Club flashed by. Now the sky to the right

2i6 THE STURDY OAK

was dark with the smoke of the belching chimneys
of many factories. For a block or two cottages of
the better sort flanked the road; then, grim, ugly
and dilapidated, stretched the twin " improved "
sections of Kentwood and Powderville. In the air
was an acrid odor. Soot begrimed everything. The
sodden ground was littered with refuse between the
shacks, which were dignified by the title of " Work-
men's Cottages."

Amid the confusion, irregular trodden paths led,
short-cutting, toward the clattering, grinding muni-
tion plants. For a space of at least half an acre
around the huge iron buildings the ground, with
sinister import, was kept clear of dwellings, but in
all directions outside of the inclosure thousands of
new yellow-pine shacks testified to the sudden de-
mand for labor. A large weather-beaten signboard
at a wired cross-road bore the name of " Kent-
wood," plus the advice that the office was adjacent
for the purchase or lease of the highly desirable
villa sites.

The motor drew up and Genevieve alighted. For
the first time since their course had been turned

THE STURDY OAK 217

toward the unlovely but productive outskirts, Gene-
vieve faced her passengers. Alys' face was pale.
Emelene's expression was puzzled and worried,
as a child's is worried when the child is suddenly
confronted by strange and gloomy surroundings.

" There is some one in the renting office," said
Genevieve with quiet determination. " I'll find out.
We shall need a guide to go around with us.
Emelene, you needn't get out unless you wish to."

Emelene shuffled uneasily, half rose, and col-
lapsed helplessly back on the cushions, like a baby
who has encountered the resistance of his buggy
strap.

" I — if you'll excuse me, Genevieve, dear, I won't
get out. I've only got on my thin kid slippers. I
didn't expect to put foot on the pavement this morn-
ing, you know."

" Very well, then, Alys ! " Genevieve's voice as-
sumed a note of command her mild accents had
never before known.

Alys' brilliant eyes snapped. " I have no desire,"
she said firmly, with all the dignity of an affronted
lady, " to go into this matter."

2i8 THE STURDY OAK

" I know you haven't. But I'm going to walk
through. / am making a report for the Woman's
Forum."

Alys' face crimsoned with anger.

" You have no right to do such a thing," she ex-
claimed. " I shall refuse you permission. You will
have to obtain a permit."

" I have one," Genevieve retorted, " from the
Health Department. And — I am to meet one of
the oflficers here."

Mrs. Brewster-Smith's descent from the tonneau
was more rapid than graceful.

"What are you trying to do?" she demanded.
" Genevieve, I don't understand you."

"Don't you?"

The diffident girl had suddenly assumed the in-
cisive strength of observant womanhood.

" I think you do. I am going to show you your
own responsibilities, if that's a possible thing. I'm
not going to let you throw them on George because
he's a man and your kin ; and I shan't let him throw
them on an irresponsible agent because he has
neither the time nor the inclination to do justice to

THE STURDY OAK 219

himself, to you, nor to these people to whom he is
responsible."

She waved a hand down the muddy, jumbled
street.

The advent of an automobile had had its effect.
Eager faces appeared at windows and doors. Chil-
dren frankly curious and as frankly neglected
climbed over each other, hanging on the ragged
fences. Two mongrel dogs strained at their chains,
yelping furiously. Genevieve crossed to the little
square building bearing a gilt " office " sign. There
was no response to her imperative knock, but a
middle-aged man appeared on the porch of the ad-
joining shack and observed her curiously.

" Wanta rent? " he called jeeringly.

"Are you in charge here?" Genevieve inquired.

"Sorter," he temporized. " Watcha want?"

" I want some one who knows something about it
to go around Kentwood with us."

"What for?" he snarled. "I got my orders."

" From whom ? " countered GeneVieve.

" None of your business, as I can see." He eyed
her narrowly. " But my orders is to keep every one

220 THE STURDY OAK

nosin' around here without no good raison out of the
place — and I don't think you're here to rent, nor
your friend, neither. Besides, there ain't nothin' to
rent."

Mrs. Brewster-Smith colored. The insult to her
ownership of the premises stung her to resentment.

" My good man," she said sharply. " I happen to
be the proprietor of North Kentwood."

" Then you'd better beat it." The guardian
grinned. " There's a dame been here with one of
them fellers from the town office."

"Where are they now?" questioned Genevieve
sharply.

" Went up factory way. But if you ain't one of
them lady nosies, you'd better beat it, I tell you."

Genevieve looked up the street. " Very well,
we'll walk on up. This is North Kentwood, isn't
it?"

" Ain't much choice," he shrugged, " but it is.
You can smell it a mile. Say, you lady owner
there " — he laughed at his own astuteness in not
being taken in — " you know the monikers, don't
you ? South Kentwood, ' Stinktown ' ; North Kent-

THE STURDY OAK 221

wood, ' Swilltown ' ? " He grinned, pulled at his
hip pocket and, extracting a flat glass flask, took
a prolonged swig and replaced the bottle with a
leer.

The two incongruous visitors were already nego-
tiating the muddy thoroughfare between the dilapi-
dated dwellings. Presently these gave place to
roughly knocked together structures for two and
three families.

The number of children was surprising. Now
and again a shrill-voiced woman, who seemed the
prototype of her who lived in the shoe, came to'
admonish her young and stare with hostile eyes at
the invaders. Refuse, barrels, cans, pigs, dogs,
chickens, were on all sides, with here and there a
street watering trough, fed, apparently, by an occa-
sional tap at the wide-apart hydrants, installed by
the factories for protection in case of fire, as evi-
denced by the signs staked by the apparatus.

" What do they pay you for these cottages ? "
Genevieve inquired suddenly.

Mrs. Brewster-Smith, whose curiosity concerning
her possessions had been aroused by the physical

222 THE STURDY OAK

evidence of the same, balanced on a rut and sur-
veyed her tormentor angrily.

" I'm sure I don't know. I've told you before I
don't understand such matters, and I see nothing to
be gained by coming here."

Genevieve pushed open a battered gate, walked
up to the door and knocked.

"What are you doing?" her companion called,
querulously.

A noise of many pattering feet on bare floors, a
strident order for silence, and the door swung open.
A young girl stood in the doorway. Behind her
were a dozen or more children, varying from tod-
dlers to gawky girls and boys of school age.

Genevieve's eyes widened. " Dear me," she ex-
claimed, " they aren't all yours! "

The young woman grinned mirthlessly. " I
should say not ! " she snapped. " They pays me to
look out for 'em — their fathers and mothers in the
factory. Watcha want ? "

" What do you pay for a house like this ? "

The hired mother's brow wrinkled, and her lips
drew back in an ugly snarl.

THE STURDY OAK 223

" They robs us, these landlords does. We gotter
be 'longside the works, so they robs us. What do I
pay for this? Thirty a month, and at that 'tain't
fit for no dawg to live in. I could knock up a shack
like this with tar paper, I could.

" And what do we get ? I gotter haul the water
in a bucket, and cook on an oil stove, and they hists
the price of the ile, 'cause he comes by in a wagon
with it. The landlords is squeezing the life out of
us, I tell ye."

She paused in her tirade to yell at her charges.
Then she turned again to the story of her wrongs.

" And of all the pest holes I ever seen, this is the
plum worst. There's chills an' fever an' typhoid
till you can't rest, an' them kids is abustin' with
measles an' mumps an' scarlet fever. That I ain't
got 'em all myself's a miracle."

" You ought to have a district nurse and inspec-
tor," said Genevieve, amused, in spite of her indig-
nation, at the dark picture presented.

" Distric' nothin'," the other sneered. " There
ain't nothin' here but rent an' taxes — doggone if I
don't quit. There's plenty to do this here mindin'

224 THE STURDY OAK

work, an' I bet I could make more at the factory.
They're payin' grand for overtime."

Genevieve looked at the thin shoulders and nar-
row chest of the girl, noted her growing pallor and
wondered how long such a physique could with-
stand the strain of hard work and overtime. She
sighed. Something of her thoughts must have
shown in her face, for the girl reddened and her
lips tightened. Without another word she slammed
the door in her visitor's face.

Mrs. Brewster-Smith cackled thin laughter.

" That's what you get for interfering," she jeered,
so angry with her hostess for this forced inspection
of her source of income that she was ready to sacri-
fice the comforts of her extended visit to have the
satisfaction of airing her resentment.

" Poor soul ! " said Genevieve. " Thirty a
month ! " Her eyes ran over the rows of crowded
shacks. " The owners must get together and do
something here," she said. " These conditions are
simply vile."

" It's probably all these people are used to," Alys
snapped. " And, besides, if they went further into

THE STURDY OAK 225

town it'd cost them the trolley both ways, and all
the time lost. It's the location they pay for. Mr.
Allen told me not two months ago he thought rents
could be raised."

"If you all co-operate," Genevieve continued her
own line of thought, " you could at least clean the
place and make it safe to live in, even if they haven't
any comforts."

Her face brightened. Around the corner came
the strong, solid figure of Miss Eliot; behind her
trotted a bespectacled young man who carried a
pigskin envelope under his arm and whose expres-
sion was far from happy.

" Hello 1 " called Miss Eliot. " So you did come.
I'm glad of it. Let me present Mr. Glass to you.
The department lent him to me for the day.
And what do you think of it, now that you can
see it?"

" Glad to meet you," said Genevieve, nodding to
the health officer. " What do I think of it? What
does Mr. Glass think? That's more important. Oh,
let me present you — this is Mrs. Brewster-Smith."

Miss Eliot's face showed no surprise, though her

226 THE STURDY OAK

eyes twinkled, but Mr. Glass was frankly taken
aback.

" Mrs. Brewster - Smith — Brewster - Smith," he
stammered. " Oh — er — " he gripped his pigskin
folio as if about to search its contents to verify the
name. " The — er — the owner ? " he inquired.

Alys stiffened. " My dear husband left me this
property. I have never before seen it."

" I'm very glad," beamed Mr. Glass, " to see that
we shall have your co-operation in our efforts to do
something definite for this section — and measures
must be taken quickly. As you see, there is no sani-
tation, no trenching, no mosquito-extermination
plant. Malaria and typhoid are prevalent; it's all
very bad, very bad, indeed. And you'd hardly be-
lieve, Mrs. Brewster-Smith, what difficulties we are
having with the owners as a class. The five big-
gest have formed an association. I suppose you've
heard about it. They must have made an effort to
interest you " — he stopped short, remembering that
her name appeared on the lists of the " Protective
League."

" Really "^-Alys had recovered her hauteur and

THE STURDY OAK 227

the aloofness becoming the situation — " I know
nothing whatever about what measures my agents
have thought it advisable to take."

Mr. Glass choked and glanced uneasily at Miss
Eliot.

That lady grinned, almost the grin of a gamin.
" You needn't look at me, Mr. Glass. I don't rep-
resent Mrs. Brewster-Smith."

" Oh, I know, I know," Mr. Glass hastened to
exonerate his companion.

" I believe Miss Eliot declined the honor," Gene-
vieve's voice was heard.

" I did," the agent affirmed. She laughed shortly.
" Otherwise you would hardly find me here in my
present capacity. One does not ' run with the hare
and hunt with the hounds,' you know."

Alys lost her temper. It seemed to her she was
ruthlessly being forced to shoulder responsibilities
she had been taught to shirk as a sacred feminine
right. Therefore, feeling injured, she voiced her
innocence.

"Your husband, my dear Genevieve, has been
good enough to administer my little estate. What-

228 THE STURDY OAK

ever he has done, or now plans to do, meets with
my entire approval."

The thrust went home in more directions than
one. Miss Eliot turned her frank gaze upon the
speaker, while she slowly nodded her head as if
studying a perfect specimen of a noxious species.
Mr. Glass gasped. There was political material in
the statement. He looked anxiously at the wife of
the gentleman implicated, but in her was no fear
and no manner of trembling. Instead, the light of
battle shone in her eyes.

" My dear Alys," she said, " my husband has
told you that he is too busy a man to give your
affairs his personal attention. He can only advise
you and turn the executive side over to another.
His experience does not extend to the stock market
or to real estate. It is an imposition to throw your
burdens upon him. If you derive benefits from
ownership, you must^educate yourself to accept your
duty to society."

" Indeed ! " flared Alys, furious at this public
arraignment. " May I ask if you intend to con-
tinue this insulting attitude? "

THE STURDY OAK 229

"If you mean, do I expect hereafter to be a live
woman and not a parasite — I do."

Mrs. Brewster-Smith turned on her heel and
walked away, teetering over the ruts and holes of
the path.

Genevieve looked distressed. " I'm sorry," she
breathed, " I'm ashamed, but it had to come out.
I — I couldn't stand it any longer. I — beg every-
body's pardon. I'm sure, it was awfully bad man-
ners of me. Oh, dear — " she faltered, half turned,
and, with a gesture of appeal toward Mrs. Brewster-
Smith's slowly retreating back, moved as if to
follow.

" I wouldn't go after her," said E. Eliot. " Of
course, you haven't had experience. You don't
know how much self-restraint you've got to build
up, but you're here now, and I'm sure Mr. Glass
understands. He's got to come up against all sorts
of exasperations on his job, too. He won't take any
stock in Mrs. Brewster-Smith's trying to tie your
husband up to these wretched conditions.

" He's looking forward to seeing an honest, pub-
lic-spirited district attorney get into office — even if

230 THE STURDY OAK

your husband doesn't yet see that women have
anything to say about it. They may heckle him in
order to force him to come out on his intentions
about the graft, and" the eight-hour day, and the
enforcement of the law, but they don't doubt his
honesty. When he know's what's what, I guess the
public can trust him to do the right thing. Only
he's got to be shown."

As she talked, giving Genevieve time to recover
from her upheaval, the three investigators were
plowing their way up and down byways equally
depressing and insanitary. Silence ensued. Occa-
sionally an expression of commiseration or con-
demnation escaped one or another of the party.

Suddenly a raucous whistle tore the air, followed
by another and another, declaring the armistice of
the noon hour. Iron gates in the surrounding wall
were opened, a stream of men and women poured
out, grimed, sweat-streaked and voluble. The two
women and their escort paused and watched the
oncoming swarm of humanity.

Around the corner, just ahead, strode a giant of
a man, followed by a red-faced, unkempt, familiar

THE STURDY OAK 231

figure — the man in charge of the renting office.
The giant came forward threateningly.

"What youse doing?" he growled. He jerked
his jersey, displaying a brass badge, P. A. Guard.

" Git outer here — git," he called.

Mr. Glass stepped forward, displaying his Health
Department permit. The giant laughed.

" Say, sonny," he sneered, " that don't go — see.
Them tin fakes don't git by. If you're one of them
guys, you come here wit' McLaughlin, and youse
can rubber. But we've had enough, of this stuff.
Them dames is no blind, neither. I'm guard for the
owners here, and we ain't takin' no chances wit'
trouble makers — git. Git a move on ! "

" The department," spluttered Glass, " shall hear
of this."

" That's all right. McLaughlin's the boss. Tell
'em not to send a kid to do a man's job."

Genevieve was too amazed to protest. It was her
first experience of defiance of Law and Order by
Law and Order.

Meanwhile, the first stragglers of the released
army of toilers were nearly upon them. The giant

232 THE STURDY OAK

observed their approach, and the look of menace
deepened on his huge, congested face.

" Move on, now — move on," he snarled, and
herded them forward in advance of the workers.

Sheepishly the three obeyed, but Miss Eliot was
not silent.

"Your name?" she demanded in judicial com-
mand.

The very terseness of her question seemed to jerk
an unwilling answer from the guard.

" Michael Mehan."

"And you're employed by the Owners' Protec-
tive League ? "

" Sure."

"Have they given you orders to keep strangers
out of the district? "

" I have me orders, and I know what they be.
I'm duly sworn in as extra guard — and I'm not the
only one, neither."

" Did he come after you? " Miss Eliot indicated
the ruffian at his side.

" I seen the lady owner blew the bunch," that
worthy remarked with a hoarse chuckle. " I

THE STURDY OAK 233

wised Mike, all right. Whatcha goin' to do about
it?"

" Mrs. Brewster-Smith, the owner," Miss Eliot
observed, " didn't seem to know that she had em-
ployed you. How about that ? "

"I'm put here by the O. P. L. That's good
enough fer yer lady owner — not — ain't it? The
things them nosey dames thinks they can git by
wit' ! " he observed to the guard, and swore an oath
that made Mr. Glass turn to him with unexpected
fury.

" You may pretend to think that I'm not what I
represent myself to be, but let me tell you, Mc-
Laughlin is going to hear of this. One more insult
to these ladies and I'll make it my business to go
personally to your employers. Get me ? "

" Shut your trap, Jim," snarled Mehan. " Yer
ain't got no orders fer no fancy language." He
leered at Genevieve. " Now we've shooed the
chickens out, we're tru'." With a wave of his huge
paw he indicated the highway the turn of the path
revealed.

Genevieve looked to the right, where the car

234 THE STURDY OAK

should be waiting her. It was gone. Evidently the
indignant Mrs. Brewster-Smith had expedited the
departure. Miss Eliot read her discomfiture.

" My car is right down here behind that palatial
mansion with the hole in the roof and the tin-can
extension. Thank you very much for your escort,"
she added, turning to the two representatives of the
Protective League. " My name, by the way, is E.
Eliot. I am a real-estate agent and my office is at
22 Braston Street. You might mention it in your
report."

The little car stood waiting, surrounded by a
group of admiring children. Its owner stepped in
briskly, backed around and received her passengers.

" Well," she smiled as they drew out on the trav-
eled highway, " how do you like the purlieus of our
noble little city?"

Genevieve was silent. Then she spoke with con-
viction.

" When George is in power — and he's got to be —
the Law will be the Law. I know him."

CHAPTER XI

BY MARJORIE BENTON COOK

George Remington walked toward headquarters
with more assurance than he felt. He resented
Doolittle's command that he appear at once. He
was beginning to realize the pressure which these
campaign managers were bringing to bear upon him.
He was not sure yet how far he could go, in out-and-
out defiance of them and their dictates.

He knew that he had absolutely no ambitions, no
interests in common with these schemers, whose
sole idea lay in party patronage, in manipulating
every political opportunity — in short, in reaping
where they had sown. The question now confront-
ing him was this : was he prepared to sell his politi-
cal birthright for the mess of pottage they offered
him?

He stood a second at the door of the office, peer-
ing through the reeking, smoke-filled atmosphere,

235

236 THE STURDY OAK

to get a bird's-eye view of the situation before he
entered.

Mr. Doolittle sat on the edge of a table mono-
loguing to Wes' Norton and Pat Noonan. Mr.
Norton was the president of the Whitewater Com-
mercial Club, composed of the leading merchants
of the town, and Mr. Noonan was the apostle of the
liquor interests. Remington felt his back stiffen as
he stepped among them.

" Good-evening, gentlemen," he said briskly.

" H'are ye, George ? " drawled Doolittle.

"There was something you wanted to discuss
with me ? "

" I dunno as there's anything to discuss, but
there's a few things Wes' an' Pat an' me'd like
to say to ye. There ain't no two ways of thinkin'
about the prosperity of Whitewater, ye know,
George. The merchants in this town is satisfied
with the way things is boomin'. The factory work-
ers is gittin' theirs, with high wages an' overtime.
The stockholders is makin' no kick on the dividends
' — as ye know, George, being one of them.

" Now, we don't want nuthin' to disturb all this.

THE STURDY OAK 237

If the fact'ries is crackin' the law a bit, why, it ain't
the first time such things has got by the inspector.
The fact'ry managers 'd like some assurance from
ye that ye're goin' to keep yer hands off before they
line up the fact'ry hands to vote for ye."

Doolittle paused here. George nodded.

" When are ye comin' out with a plain statement
of yer intentions, George?" inquired Mr. Norton
in a conciliatory tone.

" The voters in this town will get a clear state-
ment of my stand on all the issues of this campaign
in plenty of time, gentlemen."

" That's all right fer the voter, but ye can't stall
us wit' that kind of talk — " began Noonan.

"Wait a minute, Pat," counseled Doohttle.
" George means all right. He's new to this game,
but he means to stand fer the intrusts of his party,
don't ye, George? "

" I should scarcely be the candidate of that party
if I did not."

" I ain't interested in no oratory. Are ye or are
ye not goin' to keep yer hands ofif the prosperity of
Whitewater ? " demanded Noonan angrily.

238 THE STURDY OAK

" Look here, Noonan, I am the candidate for this
office — you're not. I intend to do as my conscience
dictates. I will not be hampered at every turn, nor
told what to say and what to think. I must get to
these things in my own way."

" Don't ye fergit that ye're our candidate, that
ye are to express the opinion of the people who will
elect ye, and not any dam' theories of yer own "

" I think I get your meaning, Noonan."

George spoke with a smile which for some reason
disconcerted Noonan. He sensed with considerable
irritation the social and class breach between him-
self and Remington, and while he did not under-
stand it he resented it. He called him " slick " to
Wes' and Doolittle and loudly bewailed their choice
of him as candidate.

" Then there's that P. L. bizness, Pat — don't
fergit that," urged Wes'.

" I ain't fergittin' it. There's too much nosin'
round Kentwood district by the women, George.
Too much talkin'. Ye'd better call that off right
now. Property owners down there is satisfied, an'
they got their rights, ye know."

THE STURDY OAK 239

" I suppose you know what the conditions down
there are? "

" Sure we know, George, and we want to clean it
up down there just as much as you do," said the
pacific DooHttle; "but what we're sayin' is, this
ain't the time to do it. Later, mebbe, when the con-
ditions is jest right "

" Somebody has got the women stirred up fer
fair. It's up to you to call 'em off, George," said
Mr. Norton.

" How can I call them off? "—tartly.

" Ye can put the brakes on Mrs. Remington and
that there Sheridan girl, can't ye?"

" Miss Sheridan is no longer in my employ. As
for Mrs. Remington, if she is not one in spirit with
me, I cannot force her to be. Every human being
has a right to "

" Some change sence ye last expressed yerself,
George. Seems like I recall ye sayin', ' I'll settle
that ! ' " remarked Doolittle coldly.

" We will leave my wife's name out of the dis-
cussion, please," said George with tardy but noble
loyalty.

240 THE STURDY OAK

" Well, them two I mentioned can stir up some
trouble; but they ain't the brains of their gang, by
a long shot. It's this E. Eliot we gotta deal with.
She's as smart, if not smarter, than any man in this
town. She's smarter than you, George — or me,
either," he added consolingly.

" I've seen her about, but I've never talked to
her. What sort of woman is she? "

" Quiet, sensible kind. Ye keep thinking, ' How
reasonable that woman is,' till ye wake up and find
she's got ye hooked on one of the horns of yer own
dam foolishness ! Slick as they make 'em and
straight as a string — that's E. Eliot."

" What do you want me to do about it ? " — im-
patiently.

"Are ye aimin' to answer them voiceless ques-
tions?" Pat inquired.

Silence.

" Plannin' to tear down Kentwood and enforce
them factory laws ? " demanded Wes' Norton.

Still no answer.

" I'm jest callin' yer attention to the fact that
this election is gittin' nearer every day."

THE STURDY OAK 241

"What am I to do with her? I can't afford to
show we're afraid of her."

" Huh."

" I can't bribe her to stop."

" I'd like to see the fella that would try to bribe
E. Eliot," Doolittle chuckled. " Wouldn't be enough
' ' of him left to put in a teacup."

" Then we've got to ignore her."

" We can ignore her, all right, George ; but the
women an' some of the voters ain't ignoring hen
It's my idea she's got a last card up her sleeve to
play the day before we go to the polls that'll fix us."

" Have you any plan in your mind? "

Doolittle scratched his head, wrestling with
thought.

" We was thinking that if she could be called
away suddenly, and detained till after election — "
he began meaningly.

" You mean "

" Something like that."

" I won't have it, not if I lose the election. I
won't stoop to kidnapping a woman like a highway-
man. What do you take me for, Doolittle? "

242 THE STURDY OAK

" Georgie, politics ain't no kid-glove bizness. It
ain't what you want; you're jest a small part of this
affair. You're our candidate, and we got to win
this here election. Do you get me? "

He shot out his underjaw, and there was no sign
of his usual good humor.

"Well, but "

" You don't have to know anything about this.
We'll handle it. You'll be pertected to the limit;
don't yc^ worry," sneered Noonan.

" But you can't get away with this old-fashioned
stuff nowadays, Doolittle," protested Remington.

" Can't we ? You jest leave it to your Uncle
Benjamin. You don't know nothing about this.
See?"

" I know it's a dirty, low, underhanded "

" George," remarked Mr. Doolittle, slowly hoist-
ing his big body on to its short legs, " in politics we
don't call a spade a spade. We call it ' a agricul-
tural implument.' "

With this sage remark Mr. Doolittle took his de-
parture, followed by the other prominent citizens.

George sat where they left him, head in hands.

THE STURDY OAK 243

for several moments. Then he sprang up and rushed
to the door to call them back.

He would not stand it — he would not win at that
price. He had conceded everything they had de-
manded of him up to this point, but here he drew
the line. Ever since that one independent fling of
his about suffrage they had treated him Hke a
naughty child. What did they think he was — a rub-
ber doll? He would telephone Doolittle that he
would rather give up his candidacy. Here he paused.

Suppose he did withdraw, nobody would under-
stand. The town would think the women had fright-
ened him off. He couldn't come out now and de-
nounce the machine methods of his party. Every
eye in Whitewater was focused on him ; his friends
were working for him ; the district attorneyship was
the next step in his career; Genevieve expected him
to win — no, he must go through with it ! But after
he got into office, then he would show them! He
would take orders from no one. He sat down again
and moodily surveyed the future.

In the days which followed, another mental strug-
gle was taking place in the Remington family.

244 THE STURDY OAK

Poor Genevieve was like a vi^oman struck by
lightning. She felt that her whole structure of life
had crashed about her ears. In one blinding flash
she had seen and condemned George because he con-
sidered political expediency. She realized that she
must think for herself now and not rely on him for
the family celebration. She had conceived her whole
duty in life to consist in being George's wife; but
now, by a series of accidents, she had become
aware of the great social responsibilities, the larger
human issues, which men and women must meet
together.

Betty and E. Eliot had pointed out to her that she
knew nothing of the conditions in her own town.
They assured her that it was as much her duty to
know about such things as to know the condition of
her own back yard.

Then came the awful revelations of Kentwood —
human beings huddled like rats ; children swarming,
dirty and hungry ! She could not bear to remember
the scenes she had witnessed in Kentwood.

She recalled the shock of Alys Brewster-Smith's
indifference to all that misery! The widow's one

THE STURDY OAK 245

instinct had seemed to be to fight E. EHot and the
health officer for their interference. Stranger still,
the tenants did not want to be moved out, driven on.
The whole situation was confused, but in it at least
one thing stood out clearly: Genevieve realized,
during the sleepless night after her visit to Kent-
wood, that she hated Cousin Alys !

The following Sunday, when she put on her coat,
she found a souvenir of that visit in her pocket, a
soiled reminder of poverty and toil. -She remem-
bered picking it up and noting that it was the factory
pass ot one Marya Slavonsky. She had intended to
leave it with some one in the district, but evidently
in the excitement of her enforced exit she had thrust
it into her pocket.

This Marya worked in the factories. She was
one of that grimy army Genevieve had seen coming
out of the factory gate, and she went home to that
pen which Cousin Alys provided. Marya was a
girl of Genevieve's own age, perhaps, while she,
Genevieve, had this comfortable home, and George !
She had been blind, selfish, but she would make up
for it, she would!

246 THE STURDY OAK

She would make a study of the needs of such
people; she would go among them like St. Agatha,
scattering alms and wisdom. George might have
his work; she had found hers! She would begin
with the factory girls. She would waken them to
what had so lately dawned on her. How could she
manage it? The rules of admission in the muni-
tion factories were very strict.

Then again her eye fell upon the soiled card and
a great idea was born in her brain. Dressed as a
factory girl, she would use Marya's card to get her
into the circle of these new-found sisters. She
would see how and where they worked. She would
report it all to the Forum and to George. She could
be of use to George at last.

She remembered Betty's statement that at mid-
night in the factories the women and girls had an
hour off. That was the time she chose, with true
dramatic instinct.

She rummaged in the attic for an hour, getting
her costume ready. She decided on an old black suit
and a shawl which had belonged to her mother.
She carried these garments to her bedroom and hid

THE STURDY OAK 247

them there. Then, with MachiavelHan finesse, she
laid her plans.

She would slip out of bed at half-past eleven
o'clock, taking care not to waken George, and she
would dress and leave the house by the side door.
By walking fast she could reach by midnight the
factory to which she had admission.

It annoyed her considerably to have George an-
nounce at luncheon that he had a political dinner
on for the evening and probably would not be home
before midnight. He grumbled a little over the
dinner. " The campaign," he said, " really ended
yesterday. But Doolittle thought it was wise to
have a last round-up of the business men, and give
them a final speech."

Genevieve acquiesced with a sympathetic murmur,
but she was disappointed. Merely to walk calmly
out of the house at eleven o'clock lessened the excite-
ment. However, she decided upon leaving George
a note explaining that she had gone to spend the
night with Betty Sheridan.

She looked forward to the long afternoon with
impatience. Cousin Emelene was taking her nap.

248 THE STURDY OAK

Mrs. Brewster-Smith left immediately after lunch
to make a call on one of her few women friends.
Genevieve tried to get Betty on the telephone, but
she was not at home.

It was with a thrill of pleasure that she saw E.
Eliot coming up the walk to the door. She hurried
downstairs just as the maid explained that Mrs.
Brewster-Smith was not at home.

" Oh, won't you come in and see me for a mo-
ment, Miss Eliot ? " Genevieve begged. " I do so
want to talk to you."

E. Eliot hesitated. " The truth is, I am fearfully
busy today, even though it's Sunday. I wanted to
get five minutes with Mrs. Brewster-Smith about
those cottages — " she began.

Genevieve laid a detaining hand on her arm and
led her into the living-room.

" She's hopeless ! I can hardly bear to have her
in my house after the way she acted about those
fearful places."

" Well, all that district is the limit, of course.
She isn't the only landlord."

" But she didn't see those people."

THE STURDY OAK 249

" She's human, I guess — didn't want to see dis-
turbing things."

" I would have torn down those cottages with
my own hands ! " burst forth Genevieve.

E. Eliot stared. " No one likes her income cut
down, you know," she palliated.

"Income! What is that to human decencies?"
cried the newly awakened apostle.

" Your husband doesn't entirely agree with you
in some of these matters, I suppose."

" Oh, yes he does, in his heart ! But there's
something about politics that won't let you come
right out and say what you think."

" Not after you've come right out once and said
the wrong thing," laughed E. Eliot. " I'm afraid
you will have to use your indirect influence on him,
Mrs. Remington."

Genevieve threw her cards on the table.

" Miss Eliot, I am just beginning to see how
much there is for women to do in the world. I
want to do something big — the sort of thing you
and Betty Sheridan are doing — to rouse women.
What can I do?"

250 THE STURDY OAK

E. Eliot scrutinized the ardent young face with
amiable amusement.

" You can't very well help us just now without
hurting your husband's chances and embarrassing
him in the bargain. You see, we're trying to em-
barrass him. We want him to kick over the traces
and tell what he's going to do as district attorney
of this town."

" But can't I do something that won't interfere
with George? Couldn't I investigate the factories,
or organize the working girls ? "

" My child, have you ever organized anything ? "
exclaimed E. Eliot.

" No."

" Well, don't begin on the noble working girl.
She doesn't organize easily. Wait until the election
is over. Then you come in on our schemes and
we'll teach you how to do things. But don't butt
in now, I beg of you. Misguided, well-meaning
enthusiasts like you can do more harm to
our cause than all the anti-suffragists in this
world!"

With her genial, disarming smile, E. Eliot rose

THE STURDY OAK 251

and departed. She chuckled all the way back to
her rooms over the idea of Remington's bride
wanting to take the field with the enemies of her
wedded lord.

" Women, women ! God bless us, but we're
funny ! " mused E. Eliot.

Genevieve liked her caller immensely, and she
thought over her advice, but she determined to let
it make no difference in her plans.

She saw her work cut out for her. She would not
flinch!

She would do her bit in the great cause of women
— no, of humanity. The flame of her purpose
burned steadily and high.

At a quarter-past eleven that night a slight, black-
clad figure, with a shawl over its head, softly closed
the side door of the Remington house and hurried
down the street. Never before had Genevieve been
alone on the streets after dark. She had not fore-
seen how frightened she would be at the long, dark
stretches, nor how much more frightened when any
one passed her. Two men spoke to her. She sped
on, turning now this way, now that, without regard

252 THE STURDY OAK

to direction — her eyes over her shoulder, in terror
lest she be followed.

So it was that she plunged around a corner and
into the very arms of E. Eliot, who was sauntering
home from a political meeting, where she had been
a much-advertised speaker. She was in the habit
of prowling about by herself. Tonight she was, as
usual, unattended — unless one observed two burly
workingmen who walked slowly in her wake.

" Oh, I beg your pardon," came a gently modu-
lated voice from behind the shawl. E. Eliot stared.

"No harm done here. Did I hurt you?" she
replied.

She thought she heard an involuntary " Oh ! "
from beneath the shawl.

" No, thanks. Could you tell me how to get to
the Whitewater Arms and Munitions Factory?
I'm all turned around."

" Certainly. Two blocks that way to the State
Road, and half a mile north on that. Shall I walk
to the road with you ? "

" Oh, no, thank you," the girl answered and hur-
ried on.

THE STURDY OAK 253

E. Eliot stood and watched her. Where had she
heard that voice ? She knew a good many girls who
worked at the factories, but none of them spoke like
that. All at once a memory came to her : " Couldn't
I investigate something, or organize the working
girls ? " Mrs. George Remington !

" The little fool," ejaculated the other woman,
and turned promptly to follow the flying figure.

The two burly gentlemen in the rear also turned
and followed, but E. Eliot was too busy planning
how to manage Mrs. Remington to notice them.
She had to walk rapidly to keep her quarry in sight.
As she came within some thirty yards of the gate
she saw Genevieve challenge the gatekeeper, present
her card and slip inside, the gate clanging to be-
hind her.

E. Eliot broke into a jog trot, rounded the corner
of the wall, pulled herself up quickly, using the
stones of the wall as footholds. She hung from the
top and let herself drop softly inside, standing per-
fectly still in the shadow. At the same moment the
two burly gentlemen ran round the corner and saw
nothing.

254 THE STURDY OAK

" I told ye to run — " began one of them fiercely.

" Aw, shut up. If she went over here, she'll
come out here. We'll wait."

The midnight gong and the noise of the women
shuffling out into the courtyard drowned that con-
versation for E. Eliot. She stood and watched the
gatekeeper saunter indoors, not waiting for the man
who relieved him on duty. She watched Genevieve
go forward and meet the factory hands.

The newcomer shyly spoke to the first group.
The eavesdropper could not hear what she said.
But the crowd gathered about the speaker, shuffling,
chaffing, finally listening. Somebody captured the
gatekeeper's stool and Genevieve stood on it.

" What I want to tell you is how beautiful it is
for women to stand together and work together to
make the world better," she began.

"Say, what is your job?" demanded a girl,
suspicious of the soft voice and modulated
speech.

" Well, I — I only keep house now. But I intend
to begin to do a great deal for the community, for
all of you "

THE STURDY OAK 255

" She keeps house — poor little overworked
thing!"

" But the point is, not what you do, but the spirit
you do it in "

" What is this, a revival meetin' ? "

" So I want to tell you what the women of this
town mean to do."

" Hear ! Hear ! Listen at the suffragette ! "

" First, we mean to clean up the Kentwood dis-
trict. You all know how awful those cottages are."

" Sure ; we live in 'em ! "

" We intend to force the landlords to tear them
down and improve all that district."

" Much obliged, lady, and where do we go? " de-
manded one of her listeners.

" You must have better living conditions."

" But where ? Rents in this town has boomed
since the war began. Ain't that got to you yet?
There ain't no place left fer the poor."

" Then we must find places and make them
healthy and beautiful."

"For the love of Mike! She's talkin' about
heaven, ain't she ? "

256 THE STURDY OAK

" She's talkin' through her hat ! " cried another.

" Then, we mean to make the factories obey the
laws. They have no right to make you girls work
here at night."

"Who's makin' us?"

" We are going to force the factories to obey the
letter of the law on our statute books."

A thin, flushed girl stepped out of the crowd and
faced her.

"Say, who is 'we'?"

" Why, all of us, the women of Whitewater."

" How are we goin' to repay the women of White-
water fer tearin' down our homes an' takin' away
our jobs ? Ain't there somethin' we can do to show
our gratitood?" the new speaker asked earnestly.

" Go to it — let her have it, Mamie Flynn ! " cried
the crowd.

" Oh, but you mustn't look at it that way ! We
must all make some sacrifices "

" Cut that slush ! What do you know about sac-
rifices? I'm on to you. You're one of them up-
town reformers. What do you know about sacri-
fices ? Ye got a sure place to sleep, ain't ye ? Ye've

THE STURDY OAK 257

got a full belly an' a husband to give ye spendin'
money, ain't ye? Don't ye come down here gittin'
our jobs away an' then fergettin' all about us ! "

There was a buzz of agreement and an under-
tone of anger which to an experienced speaker
would have been ominous. But Genevieve blun-
dered on : " We only want to help you "

" We don't want yer help ner yer advice. You
keep yer hands off our business! Do yer preachin'
uptown — that's where they need it. Ask the land-
lords of Kentwood and the stockholders in the
munition factories to make some sacrifices, an' see
where that gits ye ! But don't ye come down here,
a-spyin' on us, ye dirty "

The last words were happily lost as the crowd of
girls closed in on Genevieve with cries of " Spy ! "
"Scab!" "Throw her out!"

They had nearly torn her clothes off before
E. Eliot was among them. She sprang up on the
chair and shouted:

" Girls — here, hold on a minute."

There was a hush. Some one called out : " It's
Miss E. Eliot."

258 THE STURDY OAK

" Listen a minute. Don't waste your time get-
ting mad at this girl. She's a friend of mine.
And you may not beheve me, but she means all
right."

" What's she pussyf ootin' in here for ? "

" Don't you know the story of the man from
Pittsburgh who died and went on? " cried E. Eliot.
" Some kindly spirit showed him round the place,
and the newcomer said : ' Well, I don't think
heaven's got anything on Pittsburgh.' * This isn't
heaven ! ' said the spirit."

There was a second's pause, and then the laugh
came.

" Now, this girl has just waked up to the fact
that Whitewater isn't heaven, and she thought
you'd like to hear the news ! I'll take the poor lamb
home, put cracked ice on her head and let her sleep
it ofif."

They laughed again.

" Go to it," said the erstwhile spokeswoman for
the working girls.

E. Eliot called them a cheery good-night. The
factory girls drifted away, in little groups, leaving

THE STURDY OAK 259

Genevieve, bedraggled and hysterical, clinging to her
rescuer.

" They would have killed me if you hadn't come ! "
she gasped.

E. Eliot thought quickly.

" Stand here in the shadow of the fence till I
come back," she said. " It will be all right. I've
got to run into the office and send a telephone
message. I have a pal there who will let me
do it."

"You — you won't be long? "

It was clear that the nerve of Mrs. Remington
was quite gone.

" I won't be gone five minutes."

E. Eliot was as good as her word.

When she returned she seized the stool on which
her companion had made her maiden speech — ran
to the wall, placed it at the spot where she had made
her entrance and urged Genevieve to climb up and
drop over; as she obeyed, E. Eliot mounted beside
her. They dropped off, almost at the same moment
— into arms upheld to catch them.

Genevieve screamed, and was promptly choked.

26o THE STURDY OAK

" What'll we do with this extra one?" asked a
hoarse voice.

" Bring her. There's no time to waste now. If
ye yell again, ye'll both be strangled," the second
speaker added as he led the way toward the road,
where the dimmed lights of a motor car shone.

He was carrying E. Eliot as if she were a doll.
Behind him his assistant stumbled along, bearing,
less easily but no less firmly, the, wife of the candi-
date for district attorney !

CHAPTER XII

BY WILLIAM ALLEN WHITE

As the two gagged women — one comfortably
gagged with more or less pleasant bandages made
and provided, the other gagged by the large, smelly
hand of an entire stranger to Mrs. George Reming-
ton — whom she was trying impolitely to bite, by way
of introduction — were speeding through the night,
Mr. George Remington, ending a long and late
speech before the Whitewater Business Men's Club,
was saying these things :

" I especially deplore this modern tendency to
talk as though there were two kinds of people in this
country — those interested in good government, and
those interested in bad government. We are all
good Americans. We are all interested in good
government. Some of us believe good government
may be achieved through a protective tariff and a

proper consideration for prosperity [cheers], and

261

262 THE STURDY OAK

others, in their blindness, bow down to wood and
stone ! "

Hie smiled amiably at the laughter, and continued :

" But while some of us see. things differently as
to means, our aims are essentially the samje. You
don't divide people according to trades and callings.
I deplore this attempt to set the patriotic merchant
against the patriotic saloonkeeper; the patriotic
follower of the race track against the patriotic
manufacturer.

" Here is my good friend, Benjie Doolittle.
When he played the ponies in the old days, before
he went into the undertaking and furniture business,
was he less patriotic than now? Was he less pa-
triotic then than my Uncle Martin Jaffry is now,
with all his manufacturer's interest in a stable
government ? And is my Uncle Martin Jaffry more
patriotic than Pat Noonan ? Or is Pat less patriotic
than our substantial merchant, Wesley Norton ?

" Down with this talk that would make lines of
moral and patriotic cleavage along lines of vocation
or calling. I want no votes of those who pretend
that the good Americans should vote in onjs box and

THE STURDY OAK 263

the bad Americans in another box. I want the votes
of those of all castes and cults who believe in pros-
perity [loud cheers], and I want the votes of those
who believe in the glorious traditions of our party,
its magnificent principles, its martyred heroes, its
deathless name in our history! "

It was, of course, an after-dinner speech. Being
the last speech of the campaign it was also a highly
important one. But George Remington felt, as he
sat listening to the din of the applause, that he had
answered rather neatly those who said he was
wabbling on the local economic issue and was sway-
ing in the wind of socialist agitation which the
women had started in Whitewater.

As he left the hotel where the dinner had been
given, he met his partner on the sidewalk.

" Get in. Penny," he urged, jumping into his car.
" Come out to the house for the night, and we'll
have Betty over to breakfast. Then she and Gene-
vieve and you and I will see if we can't restore the
ante-bellum modus vivendi! Come on! Emelene
and Alys always breakfast in bed, anyway, and it
will be no trouble to get Betty over."

264 THE STURDY OAK

The two men rode home in complacent silence.
It was long past midnight. They sat on the veranda
to finish their cigars before going into the house.

" Penny," asked George suddenly, " what has Pat
Noonan got in this game — I mean against the agi-
tation by the women and this investigation of condi-
tions in Kentwood? Why should he agonize
over it ? "

" Is he fussing about it ? "

" Is he? Do you think I'd tie his name up in a
public speech with Martin Jafifry if Pat wasn't ofif
the reservation? You could see him swell up like
a pizened pup when I did it ! I hope Uncle Martin
will not be offended."

" He's a good sport, George. But say — what did
Pat do to give you this hunch ? "

Remington smoked in meditative silence, then
answered :

" Well, Penny, I had to raise the devil of a row
the other day to keep Pat from ribbing up Benjie
Doolittle and the organization to a frame-up to
kidnap this Eliot person."

" Kidnap E. Eliot ! " gasped the amazed Evans.

THE STURDY OAK 265

" Kidnap that very pest. And I tell you, man, if
I hadn't roared hke a stuck ox they would have done
it! Fancy introducing 'Prisoner of Zenda ' stuff
into the campaign in Whitewater! Though I will
say this. Penny, as between old army friends and
college chums," continued Mr. Remington earnestly,
" if a warrior bold with spurs of gold, who was
slightly near-sighted and not particular about his
love being so damned young and fair, would swoop
down and carry this E. Eliot off to his princely
donjon, and would let down the portcullis for two
days, until the election is over, it would help
some! Though otherwise I don't wish her any
bad luck!"

The old army friend and college chum laughed.

" Well, that's your end of the story ! I'm mighty
glad you stopped it. Here's my end. You remem-
ber two-fingered Moll, who was our first client?
The one who insisted on being referred to as a lady?
The one who got converted and quit the game and
who thought she was being pursued by the race-
track gang because she was trying to live decent? "

George smiled in remembrance.

266 THE STURDY OAK

" Well, she called me up to know if there was
any penalty for renting a house to Mike the Goat
and his wife and old Salubrious the Armenian, who
had a lady friend they were keeping from the cops
against her will. She said they weren't going to
hurt the lady, and I could see her every day to prove
it. I advised her to keep out of it, of course; but
she was strong for it, because of what she called
the big money. I explained carefully that if any-
thing should happen, her past reputation would go
against her. But she kept saying it was straight,
until I absolutely forbade her to do it, and she
promised not to."

" Mike and his woman, and Old Salubrious ! "
echoed Remington. " And E. Eliot locked up with
them for two days ! "

He shivered, partly at the memory of his own
mealy-mouthed protest.

" Well," he said, and there was an air of finality
in his tone, " I'm glad I stopped the whole infamous
business."

Mentally he decided to get Noonan on the tele-
phone the first thing in the morning and make cer-

THE STURDY OAK 267

tain that the plan was abandoned. He continued
his chat with Evans.

" But, Penny, why this agonizing of Noonan ?
What has he to lose by the better conditions in
Kentwood ? Why should he "

Outside of a neat white dwelling in the suburbs
of Whitewater, four figures were struggling in the
night toward a vine-covered door — that door which
appeared so attractively in the Welfare Bulletin of
the Toledo Blade Steel Company's publicity pro-
gram as the " prize garden home of J. Agricola,
roller."

A woman stood in the doorway, holding the door
open. Two women, who had been carried by two
men, from an automobile at the gate, were forced
through. There the men left them with their
hostess.

" I was only looking for one of yez," she said,
hospitably, " but you're bote welcome. Now,
ladies, I'm goin' to make you comfortable. It won't
do no good to scream, so I'm goin' to take your gags
off. And I hope you, lady, haven't been inconven-

268 THE STURDY OAK

ienced by a handkerchief. We could just as well
have arranged for your comfort, too."

" Madam," gasped E. Eliot, who was the first to
be released to speech, " it is unimportant who I
am. But do you know that this wdman with me is
Mrs. George Remington, the wife of the candidate
for district attorney — Mr. George Remington of
Whitewater? There has been a mistake."

The hostess looked at Genevieve, who nodded a
tearful confirmation. But the woman only smiled.

" My man don't make mistakes," she said laconi-
cally. " And, what's more to the point, miss, he's a
friend of George Remington, and why should he be
giving his lady a vacation? You are E. Eliot, and
your friends think you're workin' too hard, so
they're goin' to give you a nice rest. Nothin'
will happen to you if you are a lady, as I think you
are. And when I find out who this other lady is,
we'll make her as welcome as you ! "

She went out of the room, locking the door be-
hind her as the two women struggled vainly with
their bonds. In an instant she returned.

" My man says to tell the one who thinks she's

THE STURDY OAK 269

Mrs. George Remington that she's spendin' the
week-end with Mrs. Napoleon Boneypart," she
called. " My man says he's a good friend of George
Remington and is supportin' him for district attor-
ney, and that's how he can make it so pleasant here.

" And I'll tell you something else," she continued
proudly. " When George got married, it was my
man that went up and down Smoky Row and seen
all the girls and got 'em to give a dollar apiece for
them lovely roses labeled ' The Young Men's Repub-
lican Club.' Mr. Doolittle he seen to that. My
man really collected fifty dollars more'n he turned
in, and I got a diamond-set wrist watch with
it! So, you see, we're real friendly with them
Remingtons, and we're glad to see you, Mrs.
Remington ! "

" Oh, how horrible ! " cried Genevieve. " There
were eight dozen of those roses from the Young
Men's Republican Club, and to think — Oh, to
think "

" Well, now, George," cried Mr. Penfield Evans,
"just stop and think. Use your bean, my boy!

270 THE STURDY OAK

What is the one thing on earth that puts the fear of
God into Pat Noonan? It's prohibition. Look at
the prohibition map out West and at the suffrage
map out West. They fit each other like the paper
on the wall. Whatever women may lack in intelli-
gence about some things, there is one thing woman
knows — ^high and low, rich and poor! She knows
that the saloon is her enemy, and she hits it; and
Pat Noonan, seeing this rise of women investi-
gating industry, makes common cause with
Martin Jaffry and the whole employing class of
Whitewater against the nosey interference of
women.

"And Pat Noonan is depending on you," con-
tinued Evans. " He expects you to rise. He ex-
pects you to go to Congress — possibly to the Senate,
and he figures that he wants to be dead sure you'll
not get to truckling to decency on the liquor ques-
tion. So he ties you up — or tries you out for a
tie-up or a kidnapping; and Benjie Doolittle, who
likes a sporting event, takes a chance that you'll
stand hitched in a plan to rid the community of a
political pest without seriously hurting the pest — a

THE STURDY OAK 271

friendless old maid who won't be missed for a day
or two, and whose disappearance can be hushed up
one way or another after she appears too late for
the election.

" Just figure things out, George. Do you think
Noonan got Mike the Goat to assess the girls on the
row a dollar apiece for your flowers from the Young
Men's Republican Club, for his health! You had
the grace to thank Pat, but if you didn't know
where they came from," explained Mr. Evans
cynically, " it was because you have forgotten where
all Pat's floral offerings from the Y. M. R. C.
come from at weddings and funerals! And Pat
feels that you're his kind of people.

" Politics, George, is not the chocolate eclair that
you might think it, if you didn't know it ! Use your
bean, my boy ! Use your bean 1 And you'll see why
Pat Noonan lines up with the rugged captains of
industry who are the bulwarks of our American
liberty. Pat uses his head for something more than
a hatrack."

The two puffed for a time in silence. Finally the
host said : " Well, let's turn in."

272 THE STURDY OAK

Three minutes later George called across the
upper hall to Penfield.

" The joke's on us, Penny. Here's a note saying
that Genevieve is over with Betty for the night.
We'll call her up after breakfast and have them
both over to a surprise party."

Penny strolled across to his friend's door. He
was disappointed, and he showed it. He found
George sitting on the side of his bed.

" Penny," mused the Young Man in Pohtics, in
his finest mood, " you know I sometimes think
that, perhaps, way down deep, there is something
wrong with our politics. I don't like to be hooked
up with Noonan and his gang. And I don't like the
way Noonan and his gang are hooked up with
Wesley Norton and the silk stockings and Uncle
Martin and the big fellows. Why can't we get rid
of the Noonan influence? They aren't after the
things we're after! They only furnish the unthink-
ing votes that make majorities that elect the fellows
the big crooks handle. Lord, man, it's a dirty mess !
And why women want to get into the dirty mess is
more than I can see."

THE STURDY OAK 273

" What a sweet valedictory address you are mak-
ing for a young ladies' school ! " scoffed Penny.
" The hills are green far off ! Aren't you the Sweet
Young Thing. But I'll tell you why the women
want to get in, George. They think they want to
clean up the mess."

" But would they clean it ? Wouldn't they vote
about as we vote ? "

" Well," answered Mr. Evans with the cynicism
of the judicial mind, " let's see. You know now, if
you didn't know at the time, that Noonan got Mike
the Goat to assess the disorderly houses for the
money to buy your wedding roses from the Y. M.
R. C. All right. Noonan's bartender is on the
ticket with you as assemblyman. Are you going to
vote for him or not ? "

" But, Penny, I've just about got to vote for
him."

" All right, then. I'll tell Genevieve the truth
about Noonan and the flowers, and I'll ask her if
she would feel that she had to vote for Noonan's
bartender! " retorted Mr. Evans. " Giving women
the ballot will help at least that much. If the

274 THE STURDY OAK

Noonans stay in politics, they'll get no help from
the women when they vote ! "

" But aren't we protecting the women ? "

" Anyway, Mrs. Remington," said E. Eliot com-
fortably, " I'm glad it happened just this way.
Without you, they would hold me until after the
election on Tuesday. With you, about tomorrow
at ten o'clock we shall be released. E. Eliot alone
they have made every provision for holding. They
have started a scandal, I don't doubt, necessary to
explain my absence, and pulled the political wires
to keep me from making a fuss about it afterward.
They know their man in the district attorney's
office, and "

" Do you mean George Remington ? " This from
his wife, with flashing eyes.

" I mean," explained E. Eliot unabashed, " that
for some reason they feel safe with George Reming-
ton in the district attorney's office, or they would
not kidnap me to prevent his defeat! That is the
cold-blooded situation."

"' This party," E. Eliot smiled, " is given at the

THE STURDY OAK 275

country home of Mike the Goat, as nearly as I can
figure it out. Mike is a right-hand man of Noonan.
Noonan is a right-hand man of Benjie Doolittle and
Wesley Norton, and they are all a part of the system
that holds Martin Jafifry's industries under the ami-
able beneficence of our sacred protective tarifif!
Hail, hail, the gang's all here — what do we care
now, my dear? And because you are here and are
part of the heaven-born combination for the public
good, I am content to go through the rigors of one
night without a nightie for the sake of the cause ! "

" But they don't know who I am 1 " protested Mrs.
Remington. " And "

" Exactly, and for that reason they don't know
who you are not. Tomorrow the whole town will
be looking for you, and Noonan will hear who you
are and where you are. Then ! Say, girl — say, girl,
it will be grist for our mill! Fancy the headlines
all over the United States :

' GANG KIDNAPS CANDIDATE'S WIFE

Mystery Shrouds Plot

Candidate Remington is Silent.' "

276 THE STURDY OAK

" But he won't be silent," protested the indignant
Genevieve. " I tell you, he'll denounce it from the
platform. He'll never let this outrage "

" Well, my dear," said the imperturbable E. Eliot,
" when he denounces this plot he'll have to denounce
Doolittle and Noonan, and probably Norton, and
maybe his Uncle Martin Jaffry. Somebody is pay-
ing big money for this job! I said the headlines
will declare:

' Candidate Remington is Silent

But Still Maintains That Women Are Protected

from Rigors of Cruel World by Man's

Chivalry.' "

" Oh, Miss Eliot, don't ! How can you? Oh, I
know George will not let this outrage "

" Of course not," hooted E. Eliot. " The sturdy
oak will support the clinging vine ! But while he is
doing it he will be defeated. And if he doesn't pro-
test he will be defeated, for I shall talk ! "

" George Remington will face defeat like a gen-
tleman. Miss Eliot; have no fear of that. He will
speak out, no matter what happens."

THE STURDY OAK 277

" And when he speaks, when he tells the truth
about this whole alliance between the greedy, ruth-
less rich and the brutal, vicious dregs of this com-
munity — our cause is won ! "

The next morning George Remington reached
from his bed for his telephone and called up the
Sheridan residence. Two minutes later Penfield
Evans heard a shout. At his door stood the unclad
and pallid candidate for district attorney.

" Penny," he gasped, " Genevieve's not there !
She has not been with Betty all night. And Betty
has gone out to find E. Eliot, who is missing from
her boarding-house ! "

" Are you sure "

" God — Penny — I thought I had stopped it ! "

George was back in his room, flying into his
clothes. The two men were talking loudly. From
down the hall a sleepy voice — unmistakably Mrs.
Brewster- Smith's — was drawling :

" George — George — are you awake ? I didn't
hear you come in. Dear Genevieve went over to
stay all night with Cousin Betty, and the oddest

278 THE STURDY OAK

thing happened. About midnight the telephone bell
rang, and that odious Eliot person called you up ! "

George was in the hall in an instant and before
Mrs. Brewster-Smith's door.

" Well, well, for God's sake, what did she say ! "
he cried.

" Oh, yes, I was coming to that. She said to
send your chauffeur with the car down to the — oh,
I forget, some nasty factory or something, for Gene-
vieve. She said Genevieve was down there talking
to the factory girls. Fancy that, George! So I
just put up the receiver. I knew Genevieve was
with Betty Sheridan and not with that odious per-
son at all — it was some ruse to get your car and com-
promise you. Fancy dear Genevieve talking to the
factory girls at midnight ! "

Penfield Evans and George Remington, standing
in the hall, listened to these words with terror in
their hearts.

" Get Noonan first," said George. " I'll talk to
him."

In five seconds Evans had Noonan's residence.
Remington listened to Penny's voice.

THE STURDY OAK 279

" Gone," he was saying. " Gone where? " And
then : " Why, he was at the dinner last — What's
Doolittle's number?" ("Noonan went to New
York on the midnight train," he threw at George.)
A moment later Remington heard his partner cry,
" Doolittle's gone to New York? On the midnight
train ? "

" Try Norton," snapped George. Soon he heard
Penny exclaim. "Albany?" said Penny. "Mr.
Norton is in Albany ? Thank you!"

" Their alibis ! " said Evans calmly, as he hung
up the receiver and stared at his partner.

" Well, it — it — Why, Penny, they've stolen
Genevieve! That damned Mike and the Arme-
nian ! They've got Genevieve with that Eliot
woman! God — Why, Penny, for God's sake,
what "

" Slowly, George — slowly. Let's move care-
fully."

The voice of Penfield Evans was cool and steady,

" First of all, we need not worry about any harm
coming to Genevieve. She is with Miss Eliot, and
that woman has more sense than a man. She may

28o THE STURDY OAK

be depended upon. Now, then," Evans waved his
partner to silence and went on : " the next thing to
consider is how much publicity we shall give this
episode." He paused.

" It's not a matter of publicity; it's a matter of
getting Genevieve immediately."

" An hour or so of publicity of the screaming,
hysterical kind will not help us to find Genevieve.
But when we do find her, our publicity will have de-
feated you ! "

The two men stared at each other. Remington
said : " You mean I must shield the organiza-
tion ! "

" If you are to be elected — yes! "

" Do you think Genevieve and Miss Eliot would
consent to shield the organization when we find
them? Why, Penny, you're mad! We must call
up the chief of police ! We must scour the country !
I propose to go right to the newspapers ! The more
people who know of this dastardly thing the sooner
we shall recover the victims ! "

" And the sooner Noonan, when he comes home
tonight, will denounce you as an accessory before

THE STURDY OAK 281

the fact, with Norton and Doolittle as corroborat-
ing witnesses for him ! Oh, you're learning politics
fast, George ! "

The thought of what Genevieve would say when
she knew, through Noonan and Doolittle, that he
had heard of the plot to kidnap Miss Eliot, and
within an hour had talked to his wife casually at
luncheon without saying anything about it, made
George's heart stop. He realized that he was learn-
ing something more than politics. He walked the
floor of the room.

" Well," he said at last, " let's call in Uncle Mar-
tin Jaffry. He "

"Yes; he is probably paying for the job. He
might know something! I'll get him."

" Paying for the job ! Do you think he knew of
this plot ? " cried George as Evans stood at the
telephone.

" Oh, no. He just knew, in a leer from Doolittle,
that they had extraordinary need for five thousand
dollars or so in your behalf — that they had con-
sulted you. And then Doolittle winked and Noonan
cocked his head rakishly, and Uncle Martin put —

282 THE STURDY OAK

Hello, Mr. Jaffry. This is Penny. Dress and come
down to the office quickly. We are in serious
trouble."

Twenty minutes later Uncle Martin was sitting
with the two young men in the office of Remington
and Evans. When they explained the situation to
him his dry little face screwed up.

" Well, at least Genevieve will be all right," he
muttered. " E. Eliot will take care of her. But,
boys — boys," he squeezed his hands and rocked in
misery, " the devil of it is that I gave Doolittle the
money in a check and then went and got another
check from the Owners' Protective Association and
took the peak load off myself, and Doolittle was
with me when I got the P. A. check. We've
simply got to protect him. And, of course, what
he knows, Noonan knows. We can't go tearing
up Jack here, calling police and raising the
town ! "

George Remington rose.

" Then I've got to let my wife He in some dive
with that unspeakable Turk and that Mike the Goat
while you men dicker with the scoundrels who com-

THE STURDY OAK 283

mitted this crime ! " he said. " My God, every
minute is precious ! We must act. Let me call the
chief of police and the sheriff "

" All dear friends of Noonan's," Penny quietly
reminded him. " They probably have the same tip
about what is on as you and Uncle Martin have!
Calm down, George ! First, let me go out and learn
when Noonan and Doolittle are coming home!
When we know that, we can "

" Penny, I can't wait. I must act now. I must
denounce the whole damnable plot to the people
of this country. I must not rest one second
longer in silence as an accessory. I shall
denounce "

" Yes, George, you shall denounce," exclaimed his
partner. " But just whom — yourself, that you did
not warn Miss Eliot all day yesterday ! "

" Yes," cried Remington, " first of all, myself as
a coward ! "

" All right. Next, then, your Uncle Martin
Jaffry, who was earnestly trying to help you in the
only way he knew how to help ! Why, George, that
would be "

284 THE STURDY OAK

" That would be the least I could do to let the
people see "

" To let the people see that Mrs. Brewster-
Smith and all your social friends in this town
are associated with Mike the Goat and his

gang

Before Evans could finish, his partner stopped
him.

" Yes, yes — the whole damned system of greed !
The rich greed and the poor greed — our criminal
classes plotting to keep justice from the decent law-
abiding people of the place, who are led like sheep
to the slaughter. What did the owners pay that
money for? Not for the dirty job that was turned
— not primarily. But to elect me, because they
thought I would not enforce the factory laws and
the housing laws and would protect them in their
larceny! That money Uncle Martin collected was
my price — my price ! "

He was standing before his friends, rigid and
white in rage. Neither man answered him.

" And because the moral sense of the community
was in the hearts and heads of the women of the

THE STURDY OAK 285

community," he went on, "those who are uphold-
ing the immoral compact between business and poli-
tics had to attack the womanhood of the town — and
Genevieve's peril is my share in the shame. By
God, I'm through!"

CHAPTER XIII

BY MARY AUSTIN

Close on Young Remington's groan of utter dis-
illusionment came a sound from the street, formless
and clumsy, but brought to a sharp climax with the
crash of breaking glass.

Even through the closed window which Penfield
Evans hastily threw up, there was an obvious quality
to the disturbance which revealed its character even
before they had grasped its import.

The street was still full of morning shadows, with
here and there a dancing glimmer on the cobbles
of the still level sun, caught on swinging dinner pails
as the loosely assorted crowd drifted toward shop
and factory.

In many of the windows half-drawn blinds
marked where spruce window trimmers added last
touches to masterpieces created overnight, but di-
rectly opposite nothing screened the offense of the

a86

THE STURDY OAK 287

Voiceless Speech, which continued to display its
accusing questions to the passer-by.

Clean through the plate-glass front a stone had
crashed, leaving a heap of shining splinters, on either
side of which a score of men and boys loosely
clustered, while further down a ripple of disturb-
ance marked where the thrower of the stone
had just vanished into some recognized port of
safety.

It was a clumsy crowd, half-hearted, moved
chiefly by a cruel delight in destruction for its own
sake, and giving voice at intervals to coarse com-
ment of which the wittiest penetrated through a
stream of profanity, like one of those same splinters
of glass, to the consciousness of at least two of the
three men who hung listening in the window above :

" To hell with the suffragists ! "

At the same moment another stone hurled through
the break sent the Voiceless Speech toppling; it lay
crumpled in a pathetic feminine sort of heap, subject
to ribald laughter, but Penny Evans' involuntary
cry of protest was cut off by his partner's hand on
his shoulder.

288 THE STURDY OAK

"They're Noonan's men, Penny; it's a put-up
job."

George had marked some of the crowd at the
meetings Noonan had arranged for him, and the
last touch to the perfunctory character of the dis-
turbance was added by the leisurely stroll of the
policeman turning in at the head of the street. Be-
fore he reached the crowd it had redissolved into
the rapidly filling thoroughfare.

" It's no use, Penny. Our women have seen the
light and beaten us to it; we've got to go with them
or with Noonan and his — Mike the Goat ! "

Recollection of his wife's plight cut him like a
knife. " The Brewster-Smith women have got to
choose for themselves ! " He felt about for his
hat like a man blind with purpose.

The street sweeper was taking up the fragments
of the shattered windows half an hour later, when
Martin Jaffry found himself going rather aimlessly
along Main Street with a feeling that the bottom
had recently dropped out of things — a sensation
which, if the truth must be told, was greatly aug-
mented by the fact that he hadn't yet breakfasted.

THE STURDY OAK 289

He had remained behind the two younger men
to get into communication with Betty Sheridan and
ask her to stay close to the telephone in case Miss
Eliot should again attempt to get into touch with
her. He lingered still, dreading to go into any of
the places where he was known lest he should some-
how be led to commit himself embarrassingly on
the subject of his nephew's candidacy.

His middle-aged jauntiness considerably awry,
he moved slowly down the heedless street, sub-
ject to the most gloomy reflections. Like most
men, Martin Jaffry had always been dimly aware
that the fabric of society is held together by a sys-
tem of mutual weaknesses and condonings, but he
had always thought of himself and his own family
as moving freely in the interstices, peculiarly ex-
empt, under Providence, from strain. Now here
they were, in such a position that the first stumbling
foot might tighten them all into inextricable scandal.

It is true that Penny, at the last moment, had pre-
vailed on George to put off the relief of his feelings
by public repudiation of his political connections,
at least until after a conference with the police.

290 THE STURDY, OAK

And to George's fear that the newspapers would
get the news from the police before he had had a
chance to repudiate, he had countered with a sug-
gestion, drawn from an item in the private history
of the chief — known to him through his father's
business — which he felt certain would quicken the
chief's sense of the propriety of keeping George's
predicament from the press.

" My God ! " said George in amazement, and
Martin Jaflfry had responded fervently with " O
Lord ! "

Not because it shocked him to think that there
might be indiscretions known to the lawyer of a
chief of police which the chief might not wish
known to the world, but because, with the addition
of this new coil to his nephew's affairs, he was sud-
denly struck with the possibility of still other coils
in any one of which the saving element of indis-
cretion might be wanting.

Suppose they should come upon one, just one
impregnable honesty, one soul whom the fear of ex-
posure left unshaken. On such a possibility rested
the exemption of the Jaffry-Remingtons.

THE STURDY OAK 291

It was the reference to E. Eliot in his instruc-
tions to Betty which had awakened in Jafifry's mind
the disquieting reflection that just here might prove
such an impregnability. They probably wouldn't
be able to " do anything " with E. Eliot simply be-
cause she herself had never done anything she was
afraid to go to the public about. To do him justice,
it never occurred to him that in the case of a lady
it was easily possible to invent something which
would be made to answer in place of an indiscretion.

Probably that was Martin Jafifry's own impreg-
nability — that he wouldn't have lied about a lady
to save himself. What he did conclude was that it
was just this unbending quality of women, this
failure to provide the saving weakness, which un-
fitted them for political life.

He shuddered, seeing the whole fabric of politics
fall in ruins around an electorate composed largely
of E. Eliots, feeling himself stripped of everything
that had so far distinguished him from the Noonans
and the Doolittles.

Out of his sudden need for reinstatement with
himself, he raised in his mind the vision of woman

292 THE STURDY OAK

as the men of Martin Jaffry's world conceived her
— a tender, enveloping medium in which male com-
placency, unchecked by any breath of criticism,
reaches its perfect flower — the flower whose fruit,
eaten in secret and afar from the soil which nour-
ishes it, is graft, corruption and civic incompetence.

Instinctively his need directed him toward the
Remington place.

Mrs. Brewster-Smith was glad to see him. Be-
tween George's hurried departure and Jaffry's re-
turn several of the specters that haunt such women's
lives looked boldly in at the window.

There was the specter of scandal, as it touched
the Remingtons, touching that dearest purchase of
femininity, social standing; there was the specter
of poverty, which threatened from the exposure of
the source of her income and the enforcement of
the law; nearer and quite as poignant, was the
specter of an ignominious retreat from the comfort
of George Remington's house to her former lodg-
ing, which she was shrewd enough to realize would
follow close on the return of her cousin's wife.

All morning she had beaten ofif the invisible host

THE STURDY OAK 293

with that courage — worthy of a better cause — with
which women of her class confront the assaults of
reality; and the sight of Martin Jaffry coming up
the broad front walk met her like a warm waft of
security. She flung open the door and met him
with just that mixture of deference and relief which
the situation demanded.

She was terribly anxious about poor Genevieve,
of course, but not so anxious that she couldn't per-
ceive how Genevieve's poor uncle had suffered.

" What, no breakfast ! Oh, you poor man ! Come
right out into the dining-room."

Mrs. Brewster- Smith might have her limitations,
but she was entirely aware of the appeasing effect
of an open fire and a spread cloth even when no
meal is in sight; she was adept in the art of en-
veloping tenderness and the extent to which it may
be augmented by the pleasing aroma of ham and
eggs and the coffee which she made herself. And
oh, those poor women, what disaster they were
bringing on themselves by their prying into things
that were better left to more competent minds, and
what pain to other minds !

294 THE STURDY OAK

So selfish, but of course they didn't realize.
Really she hoped it would be a lesson to Genevieve.
The dear girl was so changed that she didn't see how
she was going to go on living with her; though, of
course, she would like to stand by dear George — and
a woman did so appreciate a home !

At this point the enveloping tenderness of Mrs.
Brewster-Smith concentrated in her fine eyes, just
brushed the heart of her listener as with a passing
wing, hovered a moment, and dropped demurely to
the tablecloth.

In the meantime two sorely perplexed citizens
were grappling with the problem of the disappear-
ance of two highly respectable women from their
homes under circumstances calculated to give the
greatest anxiety to faithful " party " men. It
hadn't needed Penny's professional acquaintance
with Chief Buckley to impress the need of secrecy
on that official's soul. " Squeal " on Noonan or
Mike the Goat? Not if he knew himself. Natu-
rally Mr. Remington must have his wife, but at the
same time it was important to proceed regularly.

" And the day before election, too ! " mourned

THE STURDY OAK 295

the chief. "Lord, what a mess! But keep cool,
Mr. Remington; this will come out all right! "

After half an hour of such ineptitudes, Penfield
Evans found it necessary to withdraw his partner
from the vicinity of the police before his impatience
reached the homicidal pitch.

" Buckley's no such fool as he sounds," Penny
advised. " He probably has a pretty good idea
where the women are hidden, but you must give
him time to tip off Mike for a getaway."

But the suggestion proved ill chosen, at least so
far as it involved a hope of keeping George from
the newspapers. Shocked to the core of his young
egotism as he had been. Remington was yet not
so shocked that the need of expression was not
stronger in him than any more distant consider-
ation.

" Getaway ! " he frothed. " Getaway 1 While a
woman like my wife — " But the bare idea was
too much for him.

" They may get away, but they'll not get off —
not a damned one of them — of lis," he corrected
himself, and with face working the popular young

296 THE STURDY OAK

candidate for district attorney set off almost on a
run for the office of the Sentinel.

Reflecting that if his friend was bent upon official
suicide, there was still no reason for his being a
witness to it, Penny turned aside into a telephone
booth and called up Betty Sheridan. He heard
her jump at the sound of his voice, and the rising
breath of relief running into his name.

" 0-o-oh, Penny ! Yes, about twenty minutes
ago. Genevieve is with her. . . . Oh, yes, I'm
sure."

Her voice sounded strong and confident.

" They're in a house about an hour from the
factory," she went on, " among some trees. I'm
sure she said trees. We were cut off. No, I couldn't
get her again. . . . Yes . . . it's a party line.
In the Redfield district. Oh, Penny, do you think
they'll do her any harm?"

It was, no doubt, the length of time it took to
assure Miss Sheridan on this point that prevented
Evans from getting around to the Sentinel, whose
editor was at that moment giving an excellent ex-
hibition of indecision between his obligation as a

THE STURDY OAK 297

journalist and his role of leading citizen in a town
where he met his subscribers at dinner.

It was good stuff — oh, it was good ! What head-
lines !

PROMINENT SOCIETY WOMEN
KIDNAPPED

Candidate Remington Repudiates Party!

It was good for a double evening edition. On
the other hand, there was Norton, one of his largest
advertisers. There was also the rival city of Ham-
ilton, which was even now basely attempting to
win away from Whitewater a recently offered
Carnegie library on the ground of its superior
fitness.

Finally there was the party.

The Sentinel had always been a sound party
organ. But what a scoop! And suppose it were
possible to save the party at the expense of its
worst element? Suppose they raised the cry of re-
form and brought Remington in on a full tide of
public indignation?

Would Mike stand the gaff? If it were made

298 THE STURDY OAK

worth his while. But what about Noonan and Doo-
Httle? So the editorial mind shuttled to and fro
amid the confused outpourings of the amazed
young candidate, while with eyes bright and con-
sidering as a rat's the editor followed Remington
in his pacings up and down the dusty, littered
room.

Completely occupied with his own reactions,
George's repudiation swept on in an angry, rapid
stream which, as it spent itself, began to give place
to the benumbing consciousness of a divided
hearing.

Until this moment Remington had had a pleasant
sense of the press as a fine instrument upon which
he had played with increasing mastery, a trumpet
upon which, as his mind filled with commendable
purposes, he could blow a very pretty tune, — a noble
tune with now and then a graceful flourish accepta-
ble to the public ear. Now as he talked he began to
be aware of flatness, of squeaking keys. . . .

"Naturally, Mr. Remington, I'll have to take
this up with the business management ..." dry-
lipped, the tune sputtered out.

THE STURDY OAK 299

At this juncture the born journalist awaked' again
in the editorial breast at the entrance of Penfield
Evans with his new item of Betty's interrupted
message.

Two women shut up in a mysterious house among
the trees! Oh, hot stuff, indeed!

Under it George rallied, recovered a little of the
candidate's manner.

" Understand," he insisted. " This goes in even
if I have to pay for it at advertising rates."

A swift pencil raced across the paper as
Remington's partner swept him off again to the
police.

Betty's call had come a few minutes before ten.
What had happened was very simple.

The two women had been given breakfast, for
which their hands had been momentarily freed.
When the bonds had been tied again it had been
easy for E. Eliot to hold her hands in such a posi-
tion that she was left, when their keeper withdrew,
with a little freedom of movement.

By backing up to the knob she had been able to
open a door into an adjoining room, in which she

300 THE STURDY OAK

had been able to make out a telephone on a stand
against the wall.

This room also had locked windows and closed
shutters, but her quick wit had enabled her to make
use of that telephone.

Shouldering the receiver out of the hook, she
had called Betty's number, and, with Genevieve
stooping to listen at the dangling receiver, had called
out two or three broken sentences.

Guarded as their voices had been, however, some
one in the house had been attracted by them, and
the wire had been cut at some point outside the room.
E. Eliot and Genevieve came to this conclusion after
having lost Betty and failed to raise any answer to
their repeated calls. Somebody came and looked
in at them through the half-open door, and, seeing
them still bound, had gone away again with a short,
contemptuous laugh.

" No matter," said E. Eliot. " Betty heard us,
and the central office will be able to trace the call."

It was because she could depend en Betty's in-
telligence, she went on to say, that she had called
her instead of the Remington house — for suppose

THE STURDY OAK 301

that fool Brewster-Smith woman had come to the
telephone !

She and Genevieve occupied themselves with their
bonds, fumbling back to back for a while, until
Genevieve had a brilliant idea. Kneeling, she bit
at the cords which held Miss Eliot's wrists until
they began to give.

What Betty had done intelligently was nothing
to what she had done without meaning it. She
had been unkind to Pudge. Young Sheridan was
in a condition which, according to his own way of
looking at it, demanded the utmost kindness.

Following a too free indulgence in marrons glacis
he had been relegated to a diet that reduced him
to the extremity of desperation.

Not only had he been forbidden to eat sweets,
but while his soul still longed for its accustomed
solace, his stomach refused it, and he was unable
to eat a box of candied fruit which he had with the
greatest ingenuity secured.

And that was the occasion Betty took — herself
full of nervous starts and mysterious recourse to

302 THE STURDY OAK

the telephone behind locked doors — to remind him
cruelly that he was getting flabby from staying too
much in the house and to recommend ^ long walk
for his good.

It was plain that she would stick at nothing to
get her brother out of the way, and Pudge was cut
to the heart.

Oh, well, he would go for a walk, from which he
would probably be brought home a limp and help-
less cripple. Come to think of it, if he once got
started to walk he was not sure he would ever turn
back; he would just walk on and on into a kinder
environment than this.

After all, it is impossible to walk in that fateful
way in a crowded city thoroughfare. Besides, one
passes so many confectioners with their mingled
temptation and disgust. Pudge rode on the trolley
as far as the city limits. Here there was softer
ground underfoot and a hint of melancholy in the
fields. A flock of crows going over gave the appro-
priate note.

Off there to the left, set back from the road
among dark, crowding trees, stood a mysterious

THE STURDY OAK 303

house. Pudge always insisted that he had known
it for mysterious at the first glance. It had a man-
sard roof and shutters of a sickly green, all closed;
there was not a sign of life about, but smoke issued
from one of the chimneys.

Here was an item potent to raise the sleuth that
slumbers in every boy, even in such well-cushioned
bosoms as Pudge Sheridan's.

He paused in his walk, fell into an elaborately
careless slouch, and tacked across the open country
toward the back of the house. Here he discovered
a considerable yard fenced with high boards that
had once been painted the same sickly green as the
shutters, and a great buckeye tree just outside,
spreading its branches over the corner furthest from
the house.

Toward this post of observation he was drifting
with that fine assumption of aimlessness which can
be managed on occasion by almost any boy, when
he was arrested by a slight but unmistakable shak-
ing of one of the shutters, as though some one from
within were trying the fastenings.

The shaking stopped after a moment, and then.

304 THE STURDY OAK

one after another, the slats of the double leaves were
seen to turn and close as though for a secret survey
of the field. After a moment or two this perform-
ance was repeated at the next window on the left,
and finally at a third.

Here the shaking was resumed after the survey,
and ended with the shutter opening with a snap and
being caught back from within and held cautiously
on the crack. Pudge kicked clods in his path and
was pretentiously occupied with a dead beetle which
he had picked up.

All at once something flickered across the ground
at his feet, swung two or three times, touched his
shoe, traveled up the length of his trousers and
rested on his breast. How that bosom leaped to
the adventure!

He fished hurriedly in his pocket and brought up
a small round mirror. It had still attached to its
rim a bit of the ribbon by which it had been fas-
tened to his sister's shopping bag, from which, if
the truth must be told, he had surreptitiously de-
tached it.

Pretending to consult it, as though it were some

THE STURDY OAK 305

sort of pocket oracle, Pudge flashed back, and pres-
ently had the satisfaction of seeing a bright fleck
of light travel across the shutter. Immediately
there was a responsive flicker from the window :
one, two, three, he counted, and flashed back: one,
two, three.

Pudge's whole being was suffused with delicious
thrills. He wished now he had obeyed that oft-
experienced presentiment and learned the Morse
code ; it was a thing no man destined for adventure
should be without. This wordles.s interchange went
on for a few moments, and then a hand, a woman's
hand — O fair, imprisoned ladies of all time! — ap-
peared cautiously at the open shutter, waved and
pointed.

It pointed toward the buckeye tree. Pudge
threw a stone in that direction and sauntered after
it, pitching and throwing. Once at the corner, after
a suitable exhibition of casualness, he climbed until
he found himself higher than the fence, facing the
house.

While he was thus occupied, things had been
happening there. The shutter had been thrown back

3o6 THE STURDY OAK

and a woman was climbing down by the help of a
window ledge below and a pair of knotted window
curtains.

Another woman prepared to follow her, gesticu-
lating forcibly to the other not to wait, but to run.
Run she did, but it was not until Pudge, lying full
length on the buckeye bough, reached her a hand
that he discovered her to be his sister's friend,
Genevieve Remington.

In the interval of her scrambling up by the aid of
the bent bough and such help as he could give her,
they had neglected to observe the other woman.
Now, as Mrs. Remington's heels drummed on the
outside of the fence, Pudge was aware of some com-
motion in the direction of the house, and saw Miss
Eliot running toward him, crying : " Run, run ! "
while two men pursued her. She made a desperate
jump toward the tree, caught the branch, hung for
a moment, lost her hold, and brought Pudge igno-
miniously down in a heap beside her.

If Miss Eliot had not contradicted it. Pudge
would have believed to his dying day that bullets
hurtled through the air; it was so necessary to the

THE STURDY OAK 307

dramatic character of the adventure that there
should be bullets. He recovered from the shock
of his fall in time to hear Miss Eliot say: " Better
not touch me, Mike; if there's so much as a
bruise vi^hen my friends find me, you'll get sent up
for it."

Her cool, even tones cut the man's stream of
profanity like a knife. He came threateningly close
to her, but refrained from laying hands on either
of them.

Meantime his companion drew himself up to the
top of the fence for a look over, and dropped back
with a gesture intended to be reassuring. Pudge
rose gloriously to the occasion.

" The others have gone back to call the police,"
he announced. Mike spat out an oath at him, but
it was easy to see that he was not at all sure that
this might not be the case. The possibility that it
might be, checked a movement to pursue the fleeing
Genevieve. Miss Eliot caught their indecision with
a flying shaft.

" Mrs. George Remington," she said, " will prob-
ably be in communication with her friends very

3o8 THE STURDY OAK

shortly. And between his wife and his old and
dear friend Mike it won't take George Remington
long to choose."

This was so obvious that it left the men nothing
to say. They fell in surlily on either side of her, and
without any show of resistance she walked calmly
back toward the house. Pudge lingered, uncertain
of his cue.

" Beat it, you putty-face! " Mike 'snarled at him,
showing a yellow fang. " If you ain't off the prem-
ises in about two shakes, you'll get what's comin'
to you. See ? "

Pudge walked with as much dignity as he could
muster in the direction of the public road. He
could see nothing of Mrs. Remington in either direc-
tion; now and then a private motor whizzed by,
but there was no other house near enough to sug-
gest a possibility of calling for help.

He concealed himself in a group of black locusts
and waited. In about half an hour he heard a car
coming from the house with the mansard roof, and
saw that it held three occupants, two men and a
woman. The men he recognized, and he was cer-

THE STURDY OAK 309

tain that the woman, though she was well bundled
up, was not E. Eliot.

The motor turned away from the town and dis-
appeared in the opposite direction. Pudge surmised
that Mike was making his getaway. He waited
another half hour and began to be assailed by the
pangs of hunger. The house gave no sign ; even the
smoke from the chimney stopped.

He was sure Miss Eliot was still there; imagina-
tion pictured her weltering in her own gore. Be-
tween fear and curiosity and the saving hope that
there might be food of some sort in the house.
Pudge left his hiding place and began a stealthy
approach.

He came to the low stoop and crept up to the
closed front door. Hovering between fear and
courage, he knocked. But there was no response.
With growing boldness he tried the door. It was
locked.

The rear door also was bolted; but, creeping on,
he found a high side window that the keepers of
this prison in their hasty flight had forgotten to
close.

3IO THE STURDY OAK

With the aid of an empty rain barrei, which he
overturned and rolled into position, Pudge scram-
bled with much hard breathing through the window
and dropped into the kitchen. Here he listened;
his ears could discern no sound. On tiptoe he crept
through the rooms of the first floor — but came upon
neither furtive enemy nor imprisoned friend. Up
the narrow stairway he crept — peeped into three
bedrooms — and finally opening the door of what
was evidently a storeroom, he found the object of
his search.

E. Eliot sat in an old splint-bottomed chair —
gagged, arms tied behind her and to the chair's
back, and her ankles tied to the chair's legs. In a
moment Pudge had the knotted towel out of her
mouth, and had cut her bonds. But quick though
Pudge was, to her he seemed intolerably slow; just
then E. Eliot was thinking of only one thing.

This was the final afternoon of the campaign and
she was away out here, far from all the great things
that might be going on.

She gave a single stretch of her cramped muscles
as she rose.

THE STURDY OAK 311

" I know you — you're Betty Sheridan's brother
— thanks," she said briskly. "What time is it?"

Pudge drew out his most esteemed possession, a
watch which kept perfect time — except when it re-
fused to keep any time at all.

" Three o'clock," he announced.

" Then our last demonstration is under way, and
when I tell my story — " E. Eliot interrupted her-
self. " Come on — let's catch the trolley ! "

With Pudge panting after her, she hurried down-
stairs, unbolted the door, and, running lightly on
the balls of her feet, sped in the direction of the
street car line.

CHAPTER XIV
BY LEROY SCOTT

In the meantime, concern and suspense and irrup-
tive wrath had their chief abode in the inner room
of Remington and Evans. George had received a
request, through Penny Evans, from the chief of
pohce to remain in his office, where he could be
reached instantly if information concerning Gene-
vieve were received, and where his help could in-
stantly be secured were it required ; and Penny had
enlarged that request to the magnitude of a com-
mand and had stood by to see that it was obeyed,
and himself to give assistance.

George had recognized the sense of the order,
but he rebelled at the enforced inactivity. Where
was Genevieve? — why wasn't he out doing some-
thing for her? He strode about the office, fuming,
sick with the suspense and inaction of his role.

But Genevieve was not his unbroken concern.
31a

THE STURDY OAK 313

He was still afire with the high resentment which
a few hours earlier had made him go striding into
the office of the Sentinel. Fragments of his state-
ment to the editor leaped into his mind; and as he
strode up and down he repeated phrases silently,
but with fierce emphasis of the soul.

Now and again he paused at his window and looked
down into Main Street. Below him was a crowd
that was growing in size and disorder : the last after-
noon of any campaign in Whitewater was exciting
enough; much more so were the final hours of this
campaign that marked the first entrance of women
into politics in Whitewater on a scale and with an
organized energy that might affect the outcome of
the morrow's voting.

Across the way, Mrs. Harrington, the fighting
blood of five generations of patriots roused in her,
had reinstated the Voiceless Speech within the plate-
glass window broken by the stones of that morning
and was herself operating it ; and, armed with ban-
ners, groups of women from the Woman's Club,
the Municipal League and the Suffrage Society
were marching up and down the street sidewalks.

314 THE STURDY OAK

It was their final demonstration, their last chance
to assert the demands of good citizenship — and it
had attracted hundreds of curious men, vote-own-
ers, belonging to what, in such periods of political
struggle, are referred to on platforms as " our bet-
ter element."

Also drifting into Main Street were groups of
voters of less prepossessing aspect — Noonan's men,
George recognized them to be. These jeered and
jostled the marching women and hooted the remarks
of the Voiceless Speech — but the women, disregard-
ing insults and attacks, went on with their silent
campaigning. The feeling was high — and George
could see, as Noonan's men kept drifting into Main
Street, that feeling was growing higher.

Looking down, George felt an angered exultation.
Well, his statement in the Sentinel, due upon the
street almost any moment, would answer all these
and give them something to think about! — a state-
ment which would make an even greater stir than
the declaration which he had issued those many
weeks ago, when, fresh from his honeymoon, he
had begun his campaign for the district attorney-

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THE STURDY OAK 315

ship. These people below certainly had a jolt com-
ing to them !

George's impatient and glowering meditations —
the hour was then near four — were broken in upon
by several interruptions, which came on him in quick
succession, as though detonated by brief-interval
time-fuses. The first was the entrance of that
straw-haired misspeller of his letters who had suc-
ceeded Betty Sheridan as guardian of the outer
office.

" Mr. Doolittle is here," she announced. " He
says he wants to see you."

" You tell Mr. Doolittle / don't want to see him! "
commanded the irritated George.

But Mr. Benjamin Doolittle was already seeing
his candidate. As political boss of his party, he had
little regard for such a formality as being announced
to any person on whom he might call — so he had
walked through the open door.

"Well, what d'you want, Doolittle? " George de-
manded aggressively.

Mr. Doolittk's face wore that look of bland solici-
tude, that unobtrusive partnership in the misfortune

3i6 THE STURDY OAK

of others, which had made him such an admirable
and prosperous officiant at the last rites of residents
of Whitewater.

" I just wanted to ask you, George — " he was be-
ginning in his soft, lily-of-the-valley voice, when the
telephone on George's desk started ringing. George
turned and reached for it, to find that Penny had
already picked up the instrument.

" I'll answer it, George. . . . Hello . . . Mr.
Remington is here, but is busy ; I'll speak for him —
I'm Mr. Evans. . . . What — it's you! Where are
you? . . . Stay where you are; I'll come right
over for you in my car."

" Who was that? " demanded George.

" Genevieve," Penny said rapidly, seizing his hat,
" and I'm going "

" So am I ! " exclaimed George.

" Not till we've had a little understanding,"
sharply put in Doolittle, blocking his way.

" Stay here, George," his partner snapped out —
" she's perfectly safe — just a httle out of breath —
telephoned from a drug store over in the Red-
field district. I'll have her back here in fifteen

THE STURDY OAK 317

minutes." And out Penny dashed, slamming the
door.

But perhaps it was the straw-haired successor of
Betty Sheridan who really prevented George from
plunging after his partner.

" You ordered the Sentinel sent up as soon as it
was out," she said. " Here are six copies."

George seized the ink-damp papers, and as the
straw-haired one walked out in rubber-heeled silence
he turned savagely upon his campaign manager.

"Well, Doolittle?" he demanded.

" I just want to ask you, George "

George exploded. " Oh, you just want to ask
me! Well, everything you want to ask me is an-
swered in that paper. Read it ! "

Doolittle took the copy of the Sentinel which was
thrust into his hands. George watched him with
triumphant grimness, awaiting the effect of the
bomb about to explode in the other's face. Mr.
Doolittle unfolded the Sentinel — looked it slowly
through — then raised his eyes to George. His face
seemed somewhat puzzled, but otherwise it was
overspread with that sympathetic concern which, as

3i8 THE STURDY OAK

much as his hearse and his folding-chairs, was a
part of his professional equipment.

" Why, George. I don't just get what you're driv-
ing at."

Forgetting that he was holding several copies of
the Sentinel, George dropped them all upon the
floor and seized the paper from Mr. Doolittle. He
glanced swiftly over the first page — and experienced
the highest voltage shock of his young public career.
Feverishly he skimmed the remaining pages. But of
all that he had poured out in the office of the Senti-
nel, not one word was in print.

Automatically clutching the paper in a hand that
fell to his side, he stared blankly at his campaign
manager. Mr. Doolittle gazed back with his air of
sympathetic concern, bewildered questioning in his
eyes. And for a space, despite the increasing up-
roar down in the street, there was a most perfect
silence in the inner office of Remington and
Evans.

Before either of the two men could speak, the
door was violently flung open and Martin Jaffry
appeared. His clothing was disarranged, his man-

THE STURDY OAK 319

ner agitated — in striking contrast to the dapper and
composed appearance usual to that middle-aged little
gentleman.

" George," he panted, " heard anything about
Genevieve? "

" She's safe. Penny's got charge of her by this
time."

His answer was almost mechanical.

" Thank God ! " Uncle Martin collapsed in one
of the office chairs. " Mind — if sit here minute —
get my breath."

George did not reply, for he had not heard. He
was gazing steadily at Mr. Doolittle; some great,
but as yet shapeless, force was surging up dazingly
within him. But he somehow held himself in
control.

" Well, Doolittle," he demanded, " you said you
came to ask something."

Mr. Doohttle's manner was still propitiatingly
bland. " I'll mention something else first, George,
if you don't mind. You just remarked I'd find
your answer in the Sentinel. There must 'a' been
some little slip-up somewhere. So I guess I better

320 THE STURDY OAK

mention first that the Sentinel has arranged to stand
ready to get out an extra."

"An extra! What for?"

" Principally, George, I reckon to print those
answers you just spoke of."

George still kept that mounting something under
his control. " Answers to what ? "

" Why, George," the other replied softly, persua-
sively. " I guess we'd better have a little chat — as
man to man — about politics. Meaning no offense,
George, stalling is all right in politics — but this time
you've carried this stalling act a little too far. As
the result of your tactics, George, why here's all
this disorder in our streets — and the afternoon be-
fore election. If you'd only really tried to stop
these messing women "

" I didn't try to stop them by kidnapping them ! "
burst from George — and Uncle Martin, his breath
recovered, now sat up, clutching his homespun
cap.

" Kidnapping women ? " queried the bland, bewil-
dered voice of the party boss. " I say, George, I
don't know what you're talking about."

THE STURDY OAK 321

"Why, you — " But George caught himself.
" Speak it out, Doohttle — what do you want? "

" Since you ask it so frankly, George, I'll try to
put it plain : You been going along handing out
high-sounding generalities. There's nothing better
and safer than generalities — usually. But this ain't
no usual case, George. These women, stirring
everything up, have got the solid interests so unset-
tled that they don't know where they're at — or
where you're at. And a lot of boys in the organiza-
tion feel the same way. What the crisis needs,
George, is a plain statement of your intentions as
district attorney, which we can get into that Sen-
tinel extra and which will reassure the public — and
the organization."

" A plain statement ? " There was a grim set to
George's jaw.

" Oh, it needn't go into too many details. Just
what you might call a ringing declaration about this
being the greatest era of prosperity Whitewater has
ever known, and that you conceive it to be the duty
of your administration to protect and stimulate this
prosperity. The people will understand, and the

322 THE STURDY OAK

organization will understand. I guess you get what
I mean, George."

" Yes, I get what you mean ! " exploded George,
his fist crashing upon the table. " You mean you
want me to be a complacent accessory to all the legal
evasions that you and your political gang and the
rich bunch behind you may want to get away with !
You want me to be a crook in office! By God,
Doolittle "

" Shut up. Remington," snapped the political boss,
his soft manner now vanished, his whole aspect now
grimly menacing. " I know the rest of what you're
going to say. I was pretty certain what it 'ud be
before I came here, but I had to know for sure.
Well, I know now, all right ! "

His lank jaws snapped again.

" Since you are not going to represent the people
that put you up, I demand your written withdrawal
as candidate for the district attorney's office."

" And I refuse to give it ! " cried George. " I
was nominated by a convention, not by you. And I
don't believe the party is as crooked as you — any-
how I'm going to give the decent members of the

THE STURDY OAK 323

party a chance to vote decently ! And you can't re-
move me from the ballot, either, for the ballot is

already printed and r"

" That'll do you no "

" I thought some time ago I was through with
this political mess," George drove on. " But, Doo-
little, damn you, I've just begun to get in it! And
I'm going to see it through to the finish ! "

Suddenly a thin little figure thrust itself between
the bellicose pair and began shaking George's hand.
It was Martin Jafifry.

" George — I guess I'm my share of an old scoun-
drel — and a trimmer — but hearing some one stand
up and talk man's talk — " He broke of? to shake
George's hand again. " I thought you were the
king of boobs — but, boy, I'm with you to wherever
you want to go — if my money will last that far ! "

" Keep out of this, Jafifry," roughly growled
Doolittle. " It's too late for your dough to help
this young pup. Remington, we may not take you
off the ballot, but the organization kin send out
word to the boys "

" To knife me ! Of course, I expect that ! All

324 THE STURDY OAK

right — go to it! But I'm on the ballot — you can't
deprive people of the chance of voting for me. And
I shall announce myself an independent and shall
run as one ! "

" We may not be able to elect our own nominee,"
harshly continued Doolittle, " but we kin send out
word to back the Democratic candidate. Miller
ain't much, but, at least, he's a soft man. And that
Sentinel extra is going to say that a feeling has
spread among the respectable element that it has lost
confidence in you, and is going to say that promi-
nent party members feel the party has made a mis-
take in ever putting you up. So run, damn you —
run as a Democrat, a Republican, an Independent —
but how are you going to git it across to the public
in a way to do yourself any good — without backing?
How are you going to git it across to the public? "

His last words, flung out with overmastering
fury, brought George up short, and he saw this.
Doolittle's wrath had mounted to that pitch which
should never be reached by the resentment of a prac-
tical politician; it had attained such force that it
drove him on to taunt his man.

THE STURDY OAK 325

" How are you going to git it before the public? "
he again demanded, eyes agleam with triumphant
rancor — " with us shutting you off and hammering
you on one side ? — and them damned messy women
across the street hammering you from the other
side? Oh, it's a grand chance you have — one Httle
old grand chance! Especially with those dear
damned females loving you like they do ! Jest take
a look at what the bunch over there are doing to
you!"

Doolittle followed his own taunting suggestion;
and George, too, glanced through his window across
the crowded street into the shattered window whence
issued the Voiceless Speech. In that jagged frame
in the raw November air still stood Mrs. Harvey
Herrington, turning the giant leaves of her sound-
less oratory. The heckling request which then
struck George's eyes began : " Will Candidate Rem-
ington answer "

George Remington read no more. His already
tense figure suddenly stiffened; he caught a sharp
breath. Then, without a word to the two men with
him, he seized his hat and dashed from his office.

326 THE STURDY OAK

The street was even more a turbulent human sea,
with violently twisting eddies, than had appeared
from George's windows. It seemed that every mem-
ber of the organizations whom Mrs. Herrington
(and also Betty Sheridan, and later E. Eliot, and,
at the last, Genevieve) had brought into this fight,
were now downtown for the supreme effort. And
it seemed that there were now more of the so-called
"better citizens." Certainly there were more of
Noonan's men, and these were still elbowing and
jostling, and making little mass rushes — yet
otherwise holding themselves ominously in
control.

Into this milling assemblage George flung him-
self, so dominated by the fiery urge within him that
he did not hear Genevieve call to him from Penny's
car, which just then swung around the corner and
came to a sharp stop on the skirts of the crowd.
George shouldered his way irresistibly through this
mass ; the methods of his football days when he had
been famed as a line-plunging back instinctively re-
turned — and, all the fine chivalry forgotten which
had given to his initial statement to the voters of

THE STURDY OAK 327

Whitewater so noble a sound, he battered aside
many of those " fairest flowers of our civili-
zation, to protect whom it is man's duty and
inspiration."

His lunging progress followed by curses and
startled cries of feminine indignation, he at length
emerged upon the opposite sidewalk, and, breathless
and disheveled, he burst into the headquarters of
the Voiceless Speech.

Some half-dozen of Mrs. Herrington's assistants
cried out at his abrupt entrance. Mrs. Herrington,
forward beside the speech, turned quickly about.

" Mr. Remington, you here ! " she cried in amaze-
ment as he strode toward her. "What — what do
you want ? "

" I want — I want — " gasped George. But instead
of finishing his sentence he elbowed Mrs. Herring-
ton out of the way, shoved past her, and stepped
forth in front of the Voiceless Speech. There,
standing in the frame of jagged plate-glass, upon
what was equivalent to a platform raised above
the crowd, he sent forth a speech which had a
voice.

328 THE STURDY OAK

"Ladies and gentlemen!" he called, raising an
imperative hand. The uproar subsided to numerous
exclamations, then to surprised silence; even
Noonan's men checked their disorder at this appear-
ance of their party's candidate.

" Ladies and gentlemen," and this Voiceful Speech
was loud, — " I'm here to answer the questions of
this contrivance behind me. But first let me tell
you that though I'm on the ballot as the candidate
of the Republican party, I do not want the backing
of the Republican machine. I'm running as an
Independent, and I shall act as an Independent.

" Here are my answers :

" I want to tell you that I shall enforce all the
factory laws.

" I want to tell you that I shall enforce the laws
governing housing conditions — particularly housing
conditions in the factory district.

" I want to tell you that I shall enforce, the laws
governing child labor and the laws governing the
labor of women.

" And I want to tell you that I shall enforce every
other law, and shall try to secure the passage of

THE STURDY OAK 329

further laws, which will make Whitewater a clean,
forward-looking city, whose first consideration shall
be the welfare of all.

" And, ladies and gentlemen — " he shouted, for
the hushed voices had begun to rise — " I wish I
could address you all as fellow-voters! — I want to
tell you that I take back that foolish statement I
made at the opening of the campaign.

" I want to tell you that I stand for, and shall
fight for, equal suffrage !

" And I want to tell you that what has brought
this change is what some of the women of White-
water have shown me — and also some of the things
our men politicians have done — our Doolittles, our
Noonans "

But George's speech terminated right there. Noise
there had been before; now there burst out an up-
roar, and there came an artillery attack of eggs,
vegetables, stones and bricks. One of the bricks
struck George on the shoulder and drove him stag-
gering back against the Voiceless Speech, sending
that instrument of silent argument crashing to the
floor. Regaining his balance, George started furi-

330 THE STURDY OAK

ously back for the window; but Mrs. Herrington
caught his arm.

" Let me go ! " he called, trying to shake her off.

But she held on. " Don't — you've said enough ! "
she cried, and pulled him toward the rear of the
room. "Look!"

Through the window was coming a heavier fire
of impromptu grenades that rolled, spent, at their
feet. But what they saw without was far more
stirring and important. Noonan's men in the
crowd, their hoodlumism now unleashed, were
bowling over the people about them; but these
really constituted Noonan's outposts and advance
guards.

From out of two side streets, though George
and Mrs. Herrington could not see their first ap-
pearance upon the scene, Noonan's real army now
came charging into Main Street, as per that gentle-
man's grim instructions to " show them messin'
women what it means to mess in politics." Hun-
dreds of Whitewater's women were flung about,
many sent sprawling to the pavement, and some hun-
dreds of the city's most respectable voters, caught

THE STURDY OAK 331

unawares, were hustled about and knocked down
by the same ruthless drive.

" My God ! " cried George, impulsively starting
forward. " The damned brutes ! "

But Mrs. Herrington still held his arm. " Come
on — they're making a drive for this office ! " breath-
lessly cried the quick-minded lady. " You can do
no good here. Out the rear way — my car's waiting
in the back street."

Still clutching his sleeve, Mrs. Herrington opened
a door and ran across the back yard of McMoni-
gal's building in a manner which indicated that that
lady had not spent her college years (and similarly
spent the years since then (propped among em-
broidered cushions consuming marshmallows and
fudge.

The lot crossed, she hurried through a little gro-
cery and thence into the street. Here they ran into
a party that, seeing the riot on Main Street and the
drive upon the window from which George had
spoken, had rushed up reinforcements from the rear
— a party consisting of Penny, E. Eliot, Betty Sheri-
dan and Genevieve.

332 THE STURDY OAK

" Genevieve ! " cried George, and caught her into
his arms.

" Oh, George," she choked. " I— I heard it all—
and it — it was simply wonderful ! "

" George," cried Betty Sheridan, " I always
knew, if you got the right kind of a jolt, you'd be —
you'd be what you are ! "

E. Eliot gripped his hand in a clasp almost as
strong as George's arm. " Mr. Remington, if I
were a man, I'd like to have the same sort of stuff
in me."

" George, you old roughneck — " began Penny.

" George," interrupted Genevieve, still chokingly,
her protective, wifely instinct now at the fore, " I
saw you hit, and we're going to take you straight
home "

" Cut it all out," interrupted the cultured Mrs.
Herrington. " This isn't Mr. Remington's honey-
moon — nor his college reunion — nor the annual con-
vention of his maiden aunts. This is Mr. Reming-
ton's campaign, and I'm his new campaign manager.
And his campaign manager says he's not going away
out to his home on Sheridan Road. His campaign

THE STURDY OAK 333

headquarters are going to be in the center of
town, at the Commercial Hotel, where he can be
reached — for there's quick work ahead of us.
Come on."

Five minutes later they were all in the Commer-
cial Hotel's best suite.

" Now, to business, Mr. Remington," briskly
began Mrs. Herrington. " Of course, that was a
good speech. But why, in heaven's name, didn't
you come out with it before? "

" I guess I really didn't know where I stood until
today," confessed George, " and today I tried to
come out with it."

And George went on to recount his experience
with the Sentinel — his scene with Doolittle — and
Doolittle's plan for an extra of the Sentinel, which
was doubtless then in preparation.

" So they've got the Sentinel muzzled, have they
— and are going to get out an extra repudiating
you," Mrs. Herrington repeated. There came a
flash into her quick, dark eyes. " I want our candi-
, date to stay right here — rest up — get his thoughts
in order. There are a lot of things to be done. I'll

334 THE STURDY OAK

be back in an hour, Mr. Remington. The rest of
you come along — you, too, Mrs. Remington."

Mrs. Herrington did not altogether keep her word
in the matter of time. It was two hours before she
was back. To George she handed a bundle of
papers, remarking : " Thought you'd like to see that
Sentinel extra."

" I suppose Doolittle has done his worst," he re-
marked grimly. He glanced at the paper, His face
went loose with bewilderment at what he saw —
headlines, big black headlines, bigger and blacker
than he had ever before seen in the politically and
typographically conservative Sentinel. He read
through a few lines of print, then looked up.

" Why, it's all here! " he gasped. " The kidnap-
ping of Miss Eliot and Genevieve by Noonan's men
— my break with Doolittle, my denunciation of the
party's methods, my coming out as an independent
candidate — that riot on Main Street ! How on earth
did that ever get into the Sentinel?"

" Some straight talk, and quick talk, and the ex-
ercise of a little of the art of pressure they say you
men exercise," was the prompt reply.

THE STURDY OAK 33S

" I telephoned Mr. Ledbetter of the Sentinel ad-
vising him to hold the extra Mr. Doolittle had
threatened until he heard from Mr. Wesley Norton,
proprietor of the Norton Dry Goods Store. You
know, Mr. Norton is the Sentinel's largest single
advertiser and president of the Whitewater Busi-
ness Men's Club.

" Then a committee of us women called on Mr.
Norton and told him that we'd organize the women
of the city and would carry on a boycott campaign
against his store — we didn't really put it quite as
crudely as that — unless he'd force the Sentinel to
stop Mr. Doolittle's lying extra and print your state-
ment.

" Mr. Norton gave in, and telephoned the Sentinel
that if it didn't do as he said he'd cancel his adver-
tising contract. Then, to make sure, we got hold
of Mr. Jaffry, called on Mr. Ledbetter, who called
in the business manager — and your Uncle Martin
told them that unless they printed the truth, and
every bit of it, and printed it at once, he was going
to put up the money to start an opposition paper that
■would print the truth. That explains the extra."

336 THE STURDY OAK

" Well," ejaculated George, still staring, " you
certainly are a wonder as a campaign mana-
ger!"

" Oh, I only did my fraction. That Miss Eliot
did as much as I — she's a find — she's going to be
one of Whitewater's really big women. And Betty
Sheridan, you can't guess how Betty's worked — and
your wife, Mr. Remington, she's turning out to be
a marvel!

" But that's not all," Mrs. Herrington continued
rapidly. "We bought ten thousand copies of that
extra for ourselves — your uncle paid for them —
and we're going to distribute them in every home
in town. When the best element in Whitewater
read how the women were trampled down by
Noonan's mob — well, they'll know how to vote!
Mr. Noonan will never guess how much he has
helped us."

" You seem to have left nothing for me to do,"'
said George.

" You'll find out there'll be all you'll want," re-
plied the brisk Mrs. Herrington. " We're organiz-
ing meetings — one in every hall in the city, one on

THE STURDY OAK 337

almost every other street corner, and we're going
to rush you from one to the next — most of the
night — and there'll be no letup for you tomorrow,
even if it is election day. Yes, you'll find there'll
be plenty to do ! "

The next twenty-four hours were the busiest
that George Remington had ever known in his
twenty-six years.

But at nine o'clock the next evening it was over —
the tumult and the shouting and the congratu-
lations — and all were gone save only Martin
Jafifry; and District- Attorney-Elect Remington
sat in his hotel suite alone in the bosom of his
family.

He was still dazed by what had happened to him
— at the part he had unexpectedly played — dazed by
the intense but well-ordered activity of the women :
their management of his whirlwind tour of the city;
their organization of parades with amazing swift-
ness; their rapid and complete house-to-house can-
vass — the work of Mrs. Herrington, of Betty, of
that Miss Eliot, of hundreds of women — and espe-
cially of Genevieve.

338 THE STURDY OAK

He marveled especially at Genevieve because he
had never thought of Genevieve as doing such things.
But she had done them — he felt that somehow she
was a dififerent Genevieve: he didn't know what
the difference was — he was in too much of a
whirl for analysis — but he had an undefined sense
of aliveness, of a spirited, joyous initiative in
her.

She and all the rest seemed so strange as to be
unbelievable. And yet, she — and all of it —
true! . . .

From dramatic events and intangible qualities of
the spirit, his consciousness shifted to material
things — his immediate surroundings. Not till this
blessed moment of relaxation did he become aware
of the discomforts of this suite — nor did Genevieve
fully appreciate the flamboyantly flowered maroon
wall-paper and the jig-saw furniture.

" George," she sighed, " now that you're not
needed down here, can't we go home ? "

" Home ! " The word came out half snort, half
growl — hardly the tone becoming one whose tri-
umph was so exultingly fresh. With a jar he had

THE STURDY OAK 339

come back to a present which he fully understood.
" Damn home ! I haven't any home ! "

Genevieve stared. Uncle Martin snickered, for
Uncle Martin had the gift of understanding.

" You mean those flowers of womanhood whom
chivalrous man "

" Shut up," commanded George. He thought for
a brief space; then his jaw set. "Excuse me a
moment."

Drawing hotel stationery toward him, he scrib-
bled rapidly and then sealed and addressed what he
had written.

" Uncle Martin, your car's outside doing nothing;
would you mind going on ahead and giving this
little note to Cousin Alys Brewster-Smith, and then
staying around and having a little supper with
Genevieve and me ? We'll be out soon, but there are
a few things I want to talk over with Genevieve
alone before we come."

Uncle Martin would oblige. But when he had
gone, there seemed to be nothing of pressing im-
portance that George had to communicate to Gene-
vieve. Nor half an hour later, when he led his

340 THE STURDY OAK

bride of four mcnths up to their home, had he de-
livered himself of anything which seemed to require
privacy.

As they stepped up on the porch, softly lighted
by a frosted bulb in its ceiling, Cousin Emelene,
her cat under her arm, came out of the front door
and hurried past them, without speech.

" Why, Cousin Emelene ! " George called after
her.

She paused and half turned.

" You — you — " she half choked upon expletives
that would not come forth. " The man will come for
my trunks in the morning." Thrusting a handker-
chief to her face, she hurried away.

" George, what can have happened to her ? " cried
the amazed Genevieve.

But George was saved answering her just then.
Another figure had emerged from the front door — a
rather largish figure, all in black — her left hand
clutching the right hand of a child, aged, possibly,
five. And this figure did not cower and hurry away.
This figure halted, and glowered.

" George Remington," exclaimed Cousin Alys,

THE STURDY OAK 341

" after your invitation — you — you apostate to chiv-
alry ! That outrageous letter ! But if I am leaving
your home, thank God I'm leaving it for a home of
my ow^n ! Come on, Martin ! "

With that she stalked away, dragging the sleepy
Eleanor.

Not till then did George and Genevieve become
aware that Uncle Martin was before them, having
until now been obscured by Mrs. Brewster-Smith's
outraged amplitude. His arms were loaded with
coats, obviously feminine.

" Uncle Martin ! " exclaimed George.

" George," gulped his uncle — " George — " And
then he gained control of a dazed sort of speech.
" When I gave her that letter I didn't know it was
a letter of eviction. And the way she broke down
before me — a woman, you know — I — I — well,
George, it's my home she's going to."

" You don't mean "

" Yes, George, that's just what I mean. Though,
of course, I'm taking her back now to Mrs. Gallup's
boarding-house until— until — good-night, George;
good-night, Genevieve."

342 THE STURDY OAK

The little man went staggering clown the walk
with his burden of wraps; and after a minute there
came the sound of his six-cylinder roadster buzzing
away into the darkness.

" I didn't tell 'em they had to go tonight," said
George doggedly. " But I did remark that even if
every woman had a right to a home, every woman
didn't have the right to make my home her home.
Anyhow," his tone becoming softer, " I've at
last got a home of ray own. Our own," he cor-
rected.

He took her in his arms. " And, sweetheart — it's.
a better home than when we first came to it, for
now I've got more sense. Now it is a home in which
each of us has the right to think and be what we
please."

At just about this same hour just about this same
scene was being enacted upon another front porch
in Whitewater — there being the slight difference
that this second porch was not softly illuminated by
any frosted globule of incandescence. Up the three
steps leading to this second porch Mr. Penfield

THE STURDY OAK 343

Evans had that moment escorted Miss Elizabeth
Sheridan.

" Good-night, Penny," she said.

He caught her by her two shoulders.

" See here, Betty — the last twenty-four hours
have been mighty busy hours — too busy
even to talk about ourselves. But now — see
here, you're not going to get away with
any rough work hke that. Come across, now.
Will you?"

"Willi what?"

" Say, how long do you think you're a paid-up
subscriber to this little daily speech of mine? . . .
Well, if I've got to hand you another copy, here
goes. You promised me, on your word of honor,
if George swung around for suffrage, you'd swing
around for me. Well, George has come around.
Not that I had much to do with it — but he surely
did come around! Now, the point is, Miss Betty
Sheridan, are you a woman of your promise — are
you going to marry me ? "

" Well, if you try to put it that way, demanding
your pound of flesh "

344 THE STURDY OAK

" One hundred and twenty pounds," corrected
Penny.

" I'll say that, of course, I don't love you, but I
guess a promise is a promise — and — and — " And
suddenly a pair of strong young arms were flung
about the neck of Mr. Penfield Evans. " Oh, I'm
so happy. Penny dear ! "

"Betty!"

After that there was a long silence . . . silence
broken only by that softly sibilant detonation which
'belongs most properly to the month of June, but
confines itself to no season . . . to a long, long
silence born of and blessed by the gods . . . until
one Percival Sheridan, coming stealthily home from
a late debauch at Humphrey's drug store, and
mounting the steps in the tennis sneakers which
were his invariable wear on dry and non-state
occasions, bumped into the invisible and unhearing
couple.

" Say, there — " gasped the startled youth, back-
ing away.

Betty gave an affrighted cry — it was a long swift
journey down from where she had just been. Her

THE STURDY OAK 345

right hand, reaching drowningly out, fell upon a
familiar shoulder.

"It's Pudge!" she cried. " Pudge "—shaking
him — " snooping around, listening and trying to
spy "

" You stop that — it ain't so ! " protested the out-
raged Pudge, his utterance throttled down some-
what by the chocolate cream in his mouth.

" Spying on people ! And, besides, you've been
stufifing yourself with candy again ! You're ruining
your stomach with that sticky sweet stuff — you're
headed straight for a candy-fiend's grave. Now,
you go upstairs and to bed ! "

She jerked him toward the door, opened it, and
as he was thrust through the door Pudge felt some-
thing, something warm, press impulsively against a
cheek. Not until the door had closed upon him did
he realize what Betty had done to him. He stood
dazed for a moment — unbalanced between impulses.
Then the sturdy maleness of fourteen rewon its
dominance.

" Guess I know what they was doing, all right —
aw, wouldn't it make you sick ! " And, in disgust

346 THE STURDY OAK

which another chocolate cream alleviated hardly at
all, he mounted to his bed.

Outside there was again silence . . . faintly
disturbed only by that softly sibilant, almost muted
percussion which recalls inevitably the month of
June. . . ,.

THE END

BY DOROTHY CANl'lisi.u

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