"'What luck,' I say!" She shrugged her shoulders and smiled despondently. "The harder I thought, the fewer ideas seemed to come my way. I give you my word, Mr. Mostyn, I haven't a ghost of an argument. I don't want to vote myself, you see, and I don't see how I am going to make other women want to. Just at present I have so many matters to bother about that I can't throw myself into an imaginary position. I'd break down and cry--I feel exactly like it--if I hadn't been this way before and managed to pull through by the skin of my teeth. You see, standing up before a crowd makes you feel so desperate and hemmed-in-like that you have to fight, and somehow you manage to say something with more or less point to it. If I don't think of something between here and the meeting-house--don't talk, please! I'm awfully nervous. I feel for the world as if I'm going to laugh and cry myself into hysterics. If Warren Wilks were to see me now he'd have the biggest argument for his side he could rake up. If I was running for office and the returns went against me I suppose I'd lie flat down in the road and kick like a spoilt child." At this moment a buggy containing two women and a man passed. One of the women, a fat motherly creature, glanced back. "Is that you, Dolly?" she asked. "Yes; how are you, Mrs. Timmons?" "I'm as well as common, thanky, Dolly. Drive slower, Joe. What's the use o' hurryin'? They can't do a thing till _she_ gits thar; besides, I want to git at the straight o' this business. Say, Dolly, it ain't true, is it, that you intend to stand up for women goin' to the polls?" Dolly swept Mostyn's expectant face with a startled look and then fixed her eyes on the speaker. "It is this way, Mrs. Timmons," she began, falteringly. "Warren Wilks suggested the subject, and--" "That ain't what I axed you," the woman retorted, sharply. "Pull in that hoss, Joe, or I'll git out an' walk the balance o' the way afoot. That ain't what I axed you, Dolly Drake. I want to know now an' here if you are goin' to teach my gals an' other folks' gals a lot o' stuff that was got up by bold-faced Yankee women with no more housework to do, or children to raise, than they have up thar these days. I want to know, I say, for if you are I'll keep my young uns at home. I've always had the highest respect for you, an' I've cheered an' stomped my feet every time you made a speech at the schoolhouse, but if speechmakin' is goin' to make you put on pants an'--" "Git up!" The driver was whipping his horse. "Don't pay no attention to 'er, Miss Dolly," he called back over his shoulder. "She's been jowerin' ever since she stepped out o' bed this mornin'. If she had a chance to vote she'd stuff the ballot-box with rotten eggs if the 'lection didn't go her way." "You see that?" Dolly sighed, as the buggy vanished in the gloom. "This fool thing may cost me my job. Warren Wilks ought to be ashamed to get up a joke like this."