"That's a nice picter," Ernestine grumbled, covering mother and daughter with glowing eyes. "Wished I had one of 'em in my place!" "Perhaps you will some day," Milly replied politely. But Ernestine shook her head. "Not unless I took one out of an asylum. I've thought of that, but I guess it ain't the same thing." "Are you all alone?" Virgie asked gravely. Ernestine nodded and added in a burst of confidence to Milly,-- "And it _is_ lonely, I can tell you, coming home every night from your work to find just a hired girl waitin' for you and your food on the table!" To which Milly made some commonplace rejoinder, and as another pause threatened she remarked pleasantly,-- "Where do you suppose I was last night, when I should have been at home looking after my little girl? At a suffrage meeting. Wasn't that like the modern mother?" "Were you at that swell Mrs. ----'s house with all those big-bugs?" Ernestine questioned excitedly. "Yes.... There were speeches about the suffrage,--the reasons why woman should have the vote, you know." "I read all about it in the paper this morning." Milly recalled what the interesting stranger had said to her about the point of view of actual women workers, and inquired,-- "What do you think about suffrage, Miss Geyer?" Ernestine gave a hoarse laugh. "I don't think much," she said succinctly. Milly made some remarks on the subject, quoting freely from Hazel Fredericks on the injustices to women in this man-made world. Ernestine listened with a smile of sceptical amusement on her homely face, and slowly shook her head. "There ain't much in _that_," she pronounced dogmatically. "The trouble ain't there. Any working-woman will tell you she ain't bothered much by lack of political power. We've got all the political powers we can use.... What does it amount to, anyhow? Things aren't done in this world by voting about 'em." She easily threw down the feeble structure of Milly's arguments, which were largely borrowed from the talk she had heard the night before. Ernestine spoke with the assurance of one who has had reason to know. "What women want is money, ain't it? Same as the men?" she demanded flatly. "That's so!" Milly assented heartily. "And they'll get it when they know how to do something somebody wants done as well as a man can. They do get it now when they've got something to give--that's truth!" She gave Milly a brief account of her own struggles in the labor market, which interested Milly deeply.