"Well, Mr. Vickery, I want to think this over a little," said Gertrude. "I cannot decide today." "Take all the time you want," replied the promoter, cheerfully. "Only, of course, the sooner we get this through, the better it will be for us all." "I see," answered the Mayor. "And now, good morning, Mr. Vickery." When she was alone again she sat back in her chair and stared hard at her desk for a good five minutes. "I am beginning to see light," said she at last. Meanwhile, Orlando Vickery was getting into his automobile and whirling away down the street, chuckling to himself. "Reformers are just like other folks," he told himself. "Catch 'em just as easy as a bird--only put a little salt on their tails, in the shape of good paying stocks, or a sufficient number of good hard, gold plunks." CHAPTER XV Setting the Trap Her next two days were given up to the study of the treasurer's books--and the financial system of government in Roma. The process necessitated looking up many details regarding salaries and other expenses, which took time and careful scrutiny on the part of both her and her office assistants. What the Mayor found out the first day led her to send for a trained accountant, whom she set quietly at work on the second morning. That night she sent for Armstrong to come to her house. "I am beginning to realize what it means to a business man to have a good home," she said to her cousin as she drew her pet easy chair up to the open fire in her library,--for although it was May the nights were chilly. "I never appreciated fully what it means to have a comfortable house well-kept;--to draw up after a hard day's work before one's own fire--to let the world go by while I 'take mine ease in mine inn.' I tell you, Jessie, if women all realized what this means, there would be more happy homes and fewer divorces." "I suppose so," replied her cousin. "Yet there is something to be said on the other side. I get so tired of staying in the house all day, struggling with the problems of housekeeping and the vagaries of servants that I rather sympathize with the women who demand the company of their husbands at night, to the theaters and dinners and whatever social functions come handy." "Wrong," said Gertrude sententiously. "When a man gets home at night, weary in body and mind with the grind of his business, he wants a good dinner, an easy chair, his newspaper or magazine, his pipe. I can understand how like heaven a woman can make his home--a woman with tact;--or how like the other place it might become with her discontented grumbling or her determination to get him into evening clothes and drag him into the outside world again,--to be harried and worried and kept uncomfortable for several hours more." "But the wives--what are they going to do?" asked Miss Craig. "Are they never to have any outside pleasures?"