Mrs. Wert Payley, who really runs our school system and once marred her proud record by defeating a good school superintendent because he didn't give her daughter good marks, says the English suffragettes are poor sticks and don't know how to demand the ballot. "If the Homeburg women were ready to go after any more ballot than we have now," says she, "would we fool away time getting arrested? Not much! We'd turn our attention to the men. Every Homeburg woman would take care of her husband and argue with him. Maybe all the men in town would find 'Votes for Women' in place of their dinners on the table one night, and sewed on to their coats the next morning. Maybe they would get corn-meal mush for thirty days, and maybe, if any he politician presumed to get obnoxious, he would be dealt with on the public street by a committee. I know Homeburg, I think, and before Calvin Briggs would stand for the guying he would receive after half a dozen women had gone down on their knees to him and grabbed him around the legs so he couldn't get away, he'd go out of politics. Suffragettes? Bah! What do they know about it? I'd just like to know how long our men-folks in Homeburg would hold out if we women were to get sick some fine morning and remain hopeless invalids until we got the ballot. Why, if Wert Payley presumed to deny me the ballot, I wouldn't think of parading about it. I'd just have the girl starch his underwear for about two months, and if that didn't fetch him, I'd start cleaning house and quit in the middle. The men will give you anything, if you ask them the right way." All of this makes us shiver, because we don't know just how long it will be before the Homeburg women do make up their minds to have more ballot. But when they do, we'll brace up like men and give it to them if the State will let us. We just naturally hate to disappoint our women-folks. XII CHRISTMAS AT HOMEBURG _And What It Means_ Now don't urge me to stay longer, Jim, because I'm going to anyway. Just to prove it, I'll take another of those gold-corseted cigars of yours, which would elevate me from the masses to the classes in three puffs if I smoked it back home. I didn't begin telling you how much I have enjoyed myself because I intended to go and wanted to start the soft music. I just wanted to begin on the job, that was all. It's going to take me an hour, at least, to tell you and Mrs. Jim what this meal has meant for me.