"How about mother, slaving down in that office all day, when all the other women of her age are taking it easy--a nap at noon, and afternoon parties, and a husband to work for them?" "Slaving fiddlesticks! She likes it. Your mother'd rather read the real estate transfers than a novel. Besides, she doesn't need to. We could live on the rents. Nothing very grand, maybe. But we could live. And why not let you do something? That's what I'd like to know! Why not----" "Oh, I'd love it. All the girls--that is, all the girls I like--are doing some kind of work. But mother says----" Aunt Charlotte sniffed. It was almost a snort. "I know what your mother says. 'No daughter of mine is going to work for her living.' Hmph!" (Which is not expressing it, but nearly.) "Calls herself modern. She's your grandfather over again and he thought he was a whole generation ahead of his generation. Wasn't, though. Little behind, if anything." Sometimes Aunt Charlotte, the subdued, the vaguely wistful, had a sparkling pugnacity, a sudden lift of spirits that showed for a brief moment a glimpse of the girl of fifty years ago. A tiff with Carrie Payson (in which Charlotte, strangely enough, usually came off victorious) often brought about this brief phenomenon. At such times she had even been known to sing, in a high off-key falsetto, such ghostly, but rakish, echoes as: Champagne Charley Was His Name, or, Captain Jinks of the Horse Marines, or even, Up in a Balloon Boys. Strangely enough as she grew older this mood became more and more familiar. It was a sort of rebirth. At times she assumed an almost jaunty air. It was as though life, having done its worst, was no longer feared by her. In spite of objections, Lottie made sporadic attempts to mingle in the stream of life that was flowing so swiftly past her--this new life of service and self-expression into which women were entering. Settlement work; folk dancing, pageantry, juvenile and girls' court work; social service; departmental newspaper work. Lottie was attracted by all of these and to any one of them she might have given valuable service. A woman, Emma Barton, not yet fifty, had been appointed assistant judge of the new girls' court. No woman had held a position such as that. Lottie had met her. The two had become friends--close friends in spite of the disparity in their ages. "I need you so badly up here," Emma Barton often told Lottie. "You've got a way with girls; and you're not school-teachery or judicial with them. That's the trouble with the regular court worker. And they talk to you, don't they? Why, I wonder? "Maybe it's because I listen," Lottie replied. "And they think I'm sort of simple. Maybe I am. But not so simple as they think." She laughed. A visit to Judge Barton's court always stimulated her, even while it saddened.