The meeting opened with a spirited address by the president of the association, Mrs. Briglow-Jorliss, who was welcomed with a brief rustle of well-bred applause, led by Frank Earl. "Got to do it," he said, in answer to Carroll's reproachful look. "You'll see; even Jack will catch on before the end of the meeting. Always applaud these folks when they begin; maybe you can't when they quit." Mrs. Briglow-Jorliss told of the enormous gains recently made by the "Antis" among the select people of the city, and passed off the suffrage parade as merely a tatterdemalion host of the riff-raff of the city led by a few notoriety seekers. "You see, Miss Holland," Frank whispered, "what a good thing it is that I came here; I never should have known that that parade wasn't one of the finest assemblages of women in the world if I hadn't." Silvia laughed in spite of herself, and the stout lady on the platform went on piling up the indictment against her sex, and showing how demoralizing the vote had proved to women; how the suffrage sentiment was dying out in the West; how the "Antis" were organizing even in the suffrage States to lift the curse from their kind; how much purer and nobler politics would be without the influence of woman, and wound up with a glowing peroration on behalf of the women who were fighting to maintain the sanctity of the home and the elevation of the children. Silvia gave an impatient ejaculation. "How can you take it so quietly, Miss Renner?" she asked. "I confess it always stirs me up." "It wouldn't if you had the ballot," said the smaller woman. "It's just amusing, or tiresome, according to how well it is done. You women are the worried and worrying Marthas; we are the Marys, who have chosen the better part that shall not be taken away; we know it can't be, and this is something like hearing people laboriously argue that the world is flat with the sun revolving around it."