"I've put it all in the address I read before the Federation last week," said Julie. "It was reported at length in one of the papers. I've got a clipping in my handbag here somewhere." She began to rummage through a little condensed chaos of handkerchiefs, gloves, powder-puff, powdery dollar bills, powdery coins, loose bits of paper, samples, thread, pins, buttons--everything--every-whichway. J. Pennock laughed. "Pipe what's going to run the world! Better get a few pockets first." "Don't be a brute, Pen!" said _Mere_. At last Julie found the clipping she sought and, shaking the powder from it, handed it to her mother. "It's on the strength of this speech that I was elected delegate to the international convention at San Francisco," she said. "You were!" _Mere_ gasped, and Beatrice and Consuelo exclaimed, "Ripsnorting!" "Are you going?" said _Mere_ when she recovered from her awe. "Well, it's a pretty expensive trip. That's why I came home--to see if--Well, we can take that up later. Tell me how you like the speech." _Mere_ mumbled the report aloud to the delighted audience. Pop heard little of it. He was having a chill. It was very like plain ague, but he credited it to the terror of Julie's mission home. All she wanted him to do was to send her on a little jaunt to San Francisco! The tyrant, as usual, was expected to finance the rebellion. When _Mere_ had finished reading everybody applauded Julie except Pop. _Mere_ overheard his silence and rounded on him across the aristocratic reading-glass she wielded. "Did you hear that?" Pop was so startled that he answered, "Uh-huh!" "Didn't you think it was splendid?" _Mere_ demanded. "Uh-huh!" said Pop. "What didn't you like about it?" "I liked it all first-rate. Julie is a smart girl, I tell you." _Mere_ scented his evasion, and she would never tolerate evasions. She repeated: "What didn't you like about it?" "I liked all I could understand." "Understand!" snapped _Mere_, who rarely wasted her culture on Pop. "What didn't you understand? Could anything be clearer than this? Listen!" She read in an oratorical voice: "'Woman has been for ages man's mere beast of burden, his household drudge. Being a wife has meant being a slave--the only servant without wages or holiday. But the woman of to-day at last demands that the shackles be stricken off; she demands freedom to live her life her own way--to express her selfhood without the hampering restrictions imposed on her by the barbaric customs inherited from the time of the cave-man.'" _Mere_ folded up the clipping and glared defiance at the cave-man slumped in the uneasy chair. "What's clearer than that?" she reiterated. Pop was at bay. He was like a desperate rabbit. He answered: "It's clear enough, I guess; but it's more than I can take in. Seems to me the women folks are hollering at the men folks to give 'em what the men folks have never been able to get for themselves."