‘I have never tried to explain it,’ sighed Mary a little wearily; ‘one is so busy trying to keep one’s little corner clean and sweet and pleasant, a helpful place where sad and tired souls can sit down and rest.’ ‘Who wants to sit down and rest? Not I!’ exclaimed Mrs. Grubb. ‘But then, I’m no criterion, I have such an active mind.’ ‘There are just a few passive virtues,’ said Mary teasingly. ‘We must remember that activity doesn’t always make for good; sometimes it is unrest, disintegration; not growth, Mrs. Grubb, but fermentation.’ Mrs. Grubb took out a small blank-book and made a note, for she had an ear for any sentence that might be used in a speech. ‘That is true. “_Distrust the activity which is not growth_, _but fermentation_” that will just hit some ladies in my classes, and it comes right in with something I am going to say this evening. We have a Diet Congress here this week, and there’s a good deal of feeling and dispute between the various branches. I have two delegates stopping with me, and they haven’t spoken to each other since yesterday morning, nor sat down to eat at the same table. I shall do all I can, as the presiding officer, to keep things pleasant at the meetings, but it will be difficult. You’ve never been in public life and can’t understand it, but you see there are women among the delegates who’ve suffered the tyranny of man so long that they will cook anything their husbands demand; women who believe in eating any kind of food, and hold that the principal trouble lies in bad cooking; women who will give up meat, but still indulge in all sorts of cakes, pastries, and kickshaws; and women who are strong on temperance in drink, but who see no need of temperance in food. The whole question of diet reform is in an awful state, and a Congress is the only way to settle it.’ ‘How do men stand on the diet question?’ asked Mary, with a twinkle in her eye.