Charlotte raised her eyebrows enquiringly, but was perhaps not surprised by what she heard; she may have already reflected that defeat, always hard to bear, comes in its most unbearable form when it makes its victims ridiculous. Shirley and Pauline, having been baulked by very small means in a project of mighty import, had a galling sense of the absurdity of their position, and were bitterly ready to turn on their ungrateful classmates. Therefore Charlotte had the satisfaction of seeing them come over to her point of view with exaggerated enthusiasm. They could not put too strongly the impossibility of any attempt to educate women politically; they thought that a few--a very few, they sadly added--might be trusted for public-spirited and disinterested action; but the mass of women were not large-minded enough to rise above personal considerations. "What other considerations did the poor things have, in your case?" asked their hostess. "A class president's duties are not so weighty that she needs any distinguished qualifications, and the choice is simply a matter of personal liking. You insisted on a week's analysis of personal likes and dislikes, and the natural result was exaggeration and slander." The freshmen sat in crestfallen silence. They had acknowledged their defeat; must they now acknowledge that it was deserved? Putting down her plate and leaning a little forward in her chair, Charlotte regarded them earnestly. "Let me tell you something," she said; "I have not lived in college six years for nothing; I have learned a great deal in that time; but it did not take me six years to learn not to waste my energy on trifles. In this campaign of yours, you have used up an amount of force which would have accomplished wonders in a serious cause. Has it paid?" "I'm afraid not," they said. "It is an odd thing, too," said Charlotte, in a casual tone, "to notice that in nine cases out of ten the popular instinct is a safer guide than the popular reason. Your class reasoned itself into a frenzy, and then, by instinct, did the right thing." At this unexpected tribute to their conqueror, the two vanquished leaders looked a bit blank; perhaps they had nursed a faint egotistical hope of some day seeing the class brought to a realizing sense of its mistake in electing Peggy, and Charlotte's view was a blow. She saw the effect of her words. "They did the right thing," she repeated, "in choosing a girl who will be an excellent figurehead for--a coalition--" Charlotte smiled, a little self-complacently; she rather prided herself on the sensitiveness of her feeling for things that were in the air--"a public-spirited, disinterested----" "Oh, don't!" pleaded Shirley; "I am sick of it. We have been talking awful cant, haven't we?" "Suppose we talk about that," said Charlotte.