"Beneficent fiddlesticks!" returned Mrs. Pennybacker, "If I were called upon to characterize that proceeding with exactness, Maria, I should call it sentimental gush gone to seed. What are they going to save these dogs from? a dependent old age--or a life of shame?" Like most persons of her calibre Mrs. Van Dorn was deficient in a sense of humor. She missed the satirical note and answered literally, "They are going to provide a home for the homeless and befriend the friendless." "That sounds well." "It is Christlike!" exclaimed Mrs. Van Dorn, with more enthusiasm than she usually exhibited. "Why, the officers elected--I didn't read you their names--are away up in society." "It is certainly Christlike to befriend the friendless," returned Mrs. Pennybacker, ignoring the social status of the officers elected--"but it strikes me there needs to be a modicum of sense displayed in the choice of subjects. As I remember it, Christ always gave the preference to those that do not perish like the beasts. He came looking after the lost sheep of the house of Israel, it is true, but they were sheep with souls. I don't seem to remember that he spent much time hunting up stray dogs. Indeed, the only case I recall in which He paid attention to animals at all was in the Gadarene country, and that was rather disastrous to the animals. You remember he sacrificed a whole herd of swine (two thousand in number, Mark says) to save the reason of one poor suffering lunatic. I think that was about the right proportion. To my mind it shows the relative importance he attaches to the two.... How Christian women can walk around here in the southwest quarter of Washington, and then give their energies to rescuing _dogs_ is more than I can understand!" When she had got a block or so away from the house she opened her rather tightly set lips to remark to herself, "It is just as well. She might have been tempted to say something. Some of these brilliantly bound volumes do have such fool things in them!" CHAPTER XXXV MRS. PENNYBACKER TALKS In Senator Southard's committee-room Mrs. Pennybacker found herself surrounded with earnest women pleading for the weak and helpless of their own sex, and life seemed suddenly to have widened out into a great and noble thing. She drew long breaths as one does in stepping from the confined atmosphere of a close room into the pure free air of heaven. It was glorious to be alive and to have a part in a work like this. She thanked God that she would be permitted to add her mite to the efforts making up the sum total of this movement for the betterment of woman's estate. She saw her duty now and was ready to do it. If opportunity offered she would no longer shrink back from saying her word.