"It isn't just getting along all right," the lawyer said, gazing down upon the street where small boys jubilant with spring were fighting, roller-skating, and playing marbles; little girls skipping rope, and chalking squares for sky-blue. "It's treating a woman like another human being. Like an individual." He swung his chair to face his life-long friend. "You ain't thinking of taking up woman suffrage, are you?" Stud asked with mild sarcasm. "Not Pankhurst and Belle La Follette and that sort of thing?" "They don't need our help, Stanley. It's we who need theirs. They'll get more than the vote. They'll get rid of corsets, smoke if they want to, go into business, live alone in a room like Early Ann Sherman wanted to...." "I ... I wanted to ask you about her," Stud said. "I wanted you to tell me more than you could that night you put her in my spring wagon." Halleck hesitated, looked down at the glowing tip of his cigar, then began slowly. "I don't think I know much more about her than you do, Stanley. She came to Brailsford Junction last winter and got a job stemming tobacco in one of the warehouses. She took a room across the track with Mrs. Marsden,--that front room downstairs with the outside door." "And then ...?" "Well, nothing really. She didn't tell anyone where she came from, or who her folks were, or why she wanted to live alone like that. She was pretty and proud and full of spunk, so the gossips got their tongues wagging ... Mrs. Marsden, and old Mrs. Crandall, and that blue jay, Temperance...." "But what was wrong?" "Nothing so far as I know. The Hubbards who live next door thought they saw a man around her window one night, and on another occasion Mrs. Marsden heard her scream, but when she reached the girl's room Early Ann was alone...." "The sluts." "Temperance Crandall and a delegation came to me--they always do--and said they wanted to swear out a warrant. I told them they couldn't swear out a warrant for a girl just because she was living alone and there was gossip...." "Dirty-minded old women," Stud said. "But they insisted it was up to me to do something. They said that if I didn't they would make it so uncomfortable for the girl she would have to leave town. I had to save the kid from that pack of she-bloodhounds." "And you knew I'd been sort of figuring on getting a hired girl to help Sarah...." "So I brought her down to your wagon that night. I knew you folks would take care of her. It was a chance to get her away from Temperance Crandall." "Not so sure you got her away," said Stud. "Temperance turned in at our place the other day. No telling what she dished out to Sarah." "She went clear out there to start trouble?" "I reckon she did." "That bitch," said Timothy Halleck. 3 At the church supper that evening Peter had a revelation. Maxine Larabee brushed against him in the coatroom, and he knew as though he had seen it in the paper that he was in love.