Mrs. Pennybacker had been borne along by her interest in the subject and its entirely familiar aspect, forgetting her companions and everything else but the Senator she wanted to convince. The other ladies telegraphed approbation to one another as she proceeded. But when she thus began to turn the other side of the shield, for some reason glances of disapproval and slight frowns began to pass among them. One of them, leaning forward to lay something on the table, adopted the feminine expedient of touching Mrs. Pennybacker's foot significantly. That lady turned and looked at her with the obtuseness of a man at his own dinner-table, and then proceeded: "What does a man do when his wife dies and leaves him with a family of children? Keep them together as she does? No, indeed! He knows he can't and I am not saying that he can, for little children and the care of them belong rightfully and naturally to women, and that is why we are trying to have this law changed so as to give her a legal as well as a natural right to them.... What does he do? Why, he gives them away to anybody that will take them. It doesn't hurt him in the least, apparently, to see them scattered to the four winds of heaven. Or--and this is what he does oftener than anything else--" There was now marked consternation in the faces of the ladies behind her, for they knew as well as she did what men do oftener than anything else. "Oftener than any other way he looks around for some girl--usually the youngest he can find that will have him--somebody, of course, that doesn't know one thing about children--he isn't thinking about that--and marries her, just as soon as decency allows, and sometimes sooner." "Well!... She has done it now!" whispered Mrs. Greuze to the black-eyed lady who was acquainted with Sanballat and Nehemiah. Mrs. Pennybacker noticed a peculiar look on the Senator's face, whether of amusement, embarrassment, or offence she could not tell, and was made dimly conscious by a glance at her companions that something was wrong, but she had thought of a story that she wanted to tell and was not to be suppressed. "Why, Senator Southard, I actually heard a Judge in the Supreme Court of this District defend that atrocious law of Charles II by which a man has the right to will his children away from the mother, on the ground that women were likely to marry again! _Women_ likely to marry again! Will you think of that? I wanted to rise up in court and say to him what I said to a man who was trying to prove to me one day that more men died than women. 'Just look at the great number of widows on South Street,' he said, 'and compare them with the small number of widowers.' 'Heavens and earth!' I said, 'that isn't owing to any undue mortality among the men. It is because they won't remain widowers!'"