"Yes," he said. "With plenty of good food and good air and the right kind of care, there is no reason why she should not win. And I intend that she shall," he concluded energetically. CHAPTER XIII AN ANTI-SUFFRAGE MEETING Dr. Earl redoubled his attentions to Leonora, determined to give her no just cause for complaint. The doubts that had beset him disappeared, for no one could be more charming than Leonora, when she was permitted to follow her own bent. Her mother also showed her gratification at his devotion, and tried, with consummate tact, to wean him away from his evident partiality for the suffrage cause. She gave him the best of the tracts issued by the Anti-Suffrage Society; while he was waiting for his offices to be fitted up, she took him to lectures and teas and receptions where anti-suffrage sentiment abounded, and tried in various ways to convince him of the superior social status of the "Anti" women. The culmination was reached, however, when he escorted her and Leonora to a meeting in a large theatre one afternoon. They were prominent figures in one of the boxes nearest the stage, and Silvia Holland and Carroll Renner, who were sitting well toward the rear of the parquet, had ample opportunity to watch the effect of the meeting upon him. Frank Earl, who had come in directly afterward and taken a seat just back of them, leaned forward and talked while the crowd gathered. "Oh, don't mind him," he said, when Miss Renner asked if that were not his brother with the anti-suffrage leaders. "He can't help himself, but if he doesn't go away from here ready to enlist under Miss Holland's banner I miss my count. Even I should, were it not that I have seen the folly of it all on its native heath. Don't make faces at me, Carroll, or people will know you are a suffragette." The theatre had been profusely decorated with flags, flowers and bunting, and mottoes were festooned along the walls, one of which was "God Bless Our Homes," and another, "Imbecile Children Will Be the Product of Imbecile Voting Women." Dr. Earl was much impressed with the audience, which, nevertheless, seemed rather chilly and unresponsive. A dignity prevailed which either could not or dared not give way to any decided demonstration, in marked contradistinction to the enthusiasm which characterized the suffrage meetings he had witnessed. In addition to the bunting and the mottoes, there were a number of large pictures, done in the style of the cartoonist. One of these showed a colonial dame at her spinning-wheel, with the words "An American Lady of Four Generations Ago" beneath it; beside it was the picture of a masculine-looking woman, in a harem skirt, standing on a box at a street corner, addressing other women similarly attired; this was called "The American Suffragette." Another picture showed a nurse caring for the sick and dying soldiers on one side, and on the other a suffragette charging the police; this picture was labeled "Before and After Taking."