"I wondered about that myself," Mrs. Pennybacker replied. Then after a pause she said casually, "There is no doubt that this law, if it ever becomes one, will apply to cases that occurred before it was enacted, is there?" "Why, no!" said Margaret, with a startled look. "I shouldn't think so." After Bess, even, had thus "broken into the Senate," as John Harcourt expressed it in his congratulatory speech delivered when--amid her blushes--the story was repeated to him, Mrs. Pennybacker felt almost cowardly in so persistently refraining her hand (figurative for tongue). It really had not been so dreadful to beard the lion in his den as she had supposed. Perhaps she owed it to the cause, or to Margaret at any rate, to give any assistance in her power. True, she had been more or less occupied with Rosalie since Margaret had taken up this new work, but of late the girl had taken a fancy to be alone more anyway. She certainly would not miss her if she should take an afternoon off. So one day late in the winter--one of Margaret's days at Elmhurst--when Mrs. Greuze came around in the morning to drum up recruits for a raid on Senator Southard in the afternoon Mrs. Pennybacker was persuaded into going. They were to meet in the Rotunda and proceed in a body to the Senator's committee-room. On her way to the capitol Mrs. Pennybacker stopped at the home of Mrs. Van Dorn. Mrs. Greuze had said, "It is desirable to interest as many women as possible, from different walks of life, in the passage of this bill--women who will make the Committee see by their presence and their persistency how vital a thing it is to them. There is some truth in what Senator Southard says about many women not caring. It is to the indifference of the women themselves that most of the failures of the woman cause can be traced. We must get a number to go, not necessarily to talk--judgment must be exercised in the selection of the ones to do that--but to give the moral support of their presence." Mrs. Pennybacker determined when she heard this that she would try to induce her niece to go with them. "Maria will _look_ all right," she said reflectively, recalling whimsically as she said it the young woman who had once shown her "The History of the World" in sixty volumes brilliantly bound in red and gold. She had not had time to acquaint herself with the names of the authors, but the friendly agent had assured her that they were the proper ones, and she said to Mrs. Pennybacker with considerable pride, "They will look all right in a library, won't they?" Yes, if there was no talking to be done Maria would be a very desirable acquisition. But, the matter being laid before her, it appeared that she could not be acquired.