Meanwhile the streets of the town had taken on a lighter, more frivolous aspect. Prettily dressed women were mincing along the pavements, their parasols bobbing up and down like variegated mushrooms. They bowed, smiled coquettishly at the men. The men swept off their hats and smirked. All of them were lovers after the manner of lovers in the South. That is to say, they adored all women, and these ladies were accustomed to being loved after the manner of Southern women. They lived for that, nothing else. Pretty goods, expensive goods, and nice, virtuous little baggages. Speculators in love, but not deliberate moral beings. They had nice consciences, easily satisfied. They had nice minds, easily blinded. Some of them were little termagants, all the dearer for that to men who like to conquer the shrew in a woman, if they do not have to do it too often. Besides, these little doll ladies were public spirited. They did dainty things about town, and they were charming while they were doing them. At this very moment they were on their way to the Woman's Civic League and Cemetery Association, which was meeting with Mabel Acres, who was the wife of the most prominent merchant in the town, and by the same token she always served the most expensive refreshments. Not a single one of them as they passed beneath the windows of the National Bank Building would or could have believed that her whole nature and attitude toward man was to be changed before night. Susan Walton, strangely excited and enhanced, now happened to glance through the window, and the sight of the fluttering feminine pageant below reminded her of something. "Come, Selah!" she exclaimed, rising with unexpected alacrity. "We are due at the Civic League and Cemetery Association, and we have work to do there!" "If I'm not mistaken in your expression, Susan, this will be the last meeting of that organization," said the Judge. "I'm hopeful that it is. The women in this town only want something to do. And we've got it at last, if only we can make them see it!" she said, as she passed through the door which he held open for her, accompanied by Selah, who wore the half-baptized look of a vague young soul still in doubt. "Not a word about her arbor-vitae trees," said the Judge as he returned to his desk. "I doubt if they'll ever be mentioned again. The weeds will take the cemetery, and the women will stop fussing about clean cuspidors in the courthouse. But what a din we shall have in this town when they really get going. Well, God help us, it had to come! They are no longer one flesh with us." * * * * * A town without women in the streets is like a meadow without flowers, a bay tree without leaves, like the air without the wings of birds in it and the sweet sounds they make there about their feathers and affairs.