Stunned dizzy by the heavy slumber of a hot July day, Mrs. Lathrop was some minutes in getting to the door, and when she got there, was some seconds in fumbling at the lock with her dream-benumbed fingers; but in the end she got it open, and then was freshly paralyzed by the sight of her friend, standing without, with her valise, her bonnet-box, her lunch in the other box, and the general appearance of a weary soldier who has fought but not exactly won. "Why, Susan, I thought you--" began Mrs. Lathrop, her mouth and eyes both popping widely open. "I did, an' I've got through an' I've come home." Miss Clegg advanced into the kitchen as she spoke and abruptly deposited her belongings upon the table and herself upon a chair. "I've been to the convention," she said; then, "I've been to the convention, an' I've got through with that, too, an' I've got home from that, too." "Why--" asked Mrs. Lathrop, advancing into a more advanced stage of perplexity, as she came more fully to herself, noted more fully her friend's exceedingly battered appearance, and folding what she had slipped on well about her, sought her rocker. "I don't know, I'm sure," said Susan, "it beats me what anybody else does it for, either. But you must n't ask me questions, Mrs. Lathrop, partly because I'm too tired to answer them, an' partly because I've come over to tell you anyhow an' I can always talk faster when you don't try to talk at the same time." Mrs. Lathrop took a fresh wind-about of her overgarment, and prepared to hold her tongue more tightly than ever. "In the first place," said Susan, speaking in the highly uplifted key which we are all apt to adopt under the stress of great excitement mixed with great fatigue; "in the first place, Mrs. Lathrop, you know as Mrs. Macy insisted on keepin' the badge 'cause she said she wanted to work it into that pillow she's makin', so I had to get along with the card as had her number on it. As a consequence I naturally had a very hard time, for I could n't find Mrs. Lupey an' had to fiddle my own canoe from the start clear through to the finish. I can tell you I've had a hard day an' no one need n't ever say Woman's Rights to me never again. I'm too full of Women's Wrongs for my own comfort from now on, an' the way I've been treated this day makes me willin' to be a turkey in a harem before I'd ever be a delegate to nothin' run by women again. "In the first place when I got to the train it was full an' while I was packin' myself into the two little angles left by a very fat man, a woman come through an' stuck a little flag in my bonnet without my ever noticin' what she done an' that little flag pretty near did me up right in the start. Seems, Mrs. Lathrop, as goin' to a Woman's Convention makes you everybody's business but your own from the beginnin', an' that little flag as that woman stuck in my bonnet was a sign to every one as I was a delegate.