'Well,' Mrs. Vinney decided, 'I suppose you and I aren't a bit alike. I just couldn't, and there it is. I dare say it's all my silliness. But with the men out there in such danger, and laying down their lives the way they're doing ... well, I _couldn't_ sit and look at the _Girl on the Garden Wall_, not if I had a stall free. The way I see it is, the men are fighting for us women, and where should we be but for them, and the least we can do is not to forget all about them, seeing gay musical plays. The way I'm made, I suppose, and I don't pretend to judge for others.' 'It's all a question of taste and feeling,' Kate pronounced absently, more interested in a new stitch she was introducing into her body-belt. The fat dark girl, Miss Simon, came in on the mention of women. It was her subject. 'Women's work in war time is every bit as important as men's, that's what I say; only they don't get the glory.' Mrs. Vinney giggled and looked at the others. 'Now Rachel's off again. She's a caution when she gets on the woman question. She spent most of her time in Holloway in the old days, didn't you, dear?' 'She thinks she ought to have the vote,' Sid Vinney explained to Alix in a whisper. Alix, who had hitherto moved in circles where every one thought, as a matter of course, that they ought to have the vote, disappointed him by her lack of spontaneous mirth. Miss Simon was inquiring, undeterred by these comments, 'Who keeps the country at home going while the men are at the war? Who brings up the families? Who nurses the soldiers? What do women get out of a war, ever?' 'The salvation of their country, Miss Simon,' said Mrs. Frampton, 'won for them by brave men.' 'After all,' said Sid, 'the women can't _fight_, you know. They can't _fight_ for their country.' Miss Simon regarded him with scorn. 'How much are _you_ fighting for your country, I'd like to know?' 'One for you, Sid,' said Evie cheerily, ignoring Sid's aggrieved, 'Well, you know I can't leave mother.' 'And fighting isn't everything,' Miss Simon went on, 'and war time isn't everything. There's women's work in peace time. What about Octavia Wills that did so much for housing? Wasn't _she_ helping her country? And, for war work, what price Florence Nightingale? What would the country have done without _her_, and what did she get out of all she did?' Mrs. Frampton, who had not read the life of that strong-minded person, but cherished a mid-Victorian vision of a lady with a lamp, sounder in the heart than in the head, said, 'She kept her place as a woman, Miss Simon.' Evie, who was not listening much, finding the subject tedious, put in vaguely, 'After all, when it comes to fighting, we _are_ left in the lurch, aren't we?' Sid said, 'Oh dear no, Miss Evie. What price Christabel and Co.? They ought to have had the iron cross all round, the militants ought. They did more to earn it than the Huns ever did.'