"Oh," Laura said, tumbling back on her pillow, "I didn't know you meant that. I thought you meant ... something else." "That's what I'm up to," Frederica said. "I'm going to get all the girls I know to promise, not only that they won't play with dissipated fellows, but that they'll tell 'em straight out why they won't!" Laura was silent. "Truth!" Fred said, flinging up her head, her hair falling back over her shoulders, and her eyes bold and innocent. "Truth is what we want! If we can get this bill through the Legislature--'no marriage without a clean bill of health'--we'll accomplish a lot for the sake of Truth. I wish you'd signed the petition, Laura. You believe in it?" "Of course I believe in it. But imagine trying to make Mama understand it!--and Father would have had a fit." "That's the trouble with women!" Fred said, passionately. "We've been too much afraid of men having fits. Let 'em have fits! It will be good for them. We've let them demand that we should be straight, and we've never had the sand to demand that they should be straight, too. But we're going to do it now. We are going to demand _Truth_! Oh," she said, tears suddenly standing in her eyes, "just plain truth, between men and women, nothing more than that,--would make the world over!" Laura sighed and shook her head. "As for playing only with the straight ones, I don't see how we can know? It doesn't seem fair not to dance with a man just because some other girl tells you she's heard something--you'd always hear it from a girl." "General reputation," Fred began; but still Laura hesitated. "Well, then, when we _do_ know it of ourselves, let's hold together and turn 'em down. Everybody knows Jack drinks. I've seen him when he was pretty well loaded," Fred said, her lip drooping with disgust. "He's crazy about you, Laura; give him a leg up by telling him why you wouldn't look at him!" "Oh, Freddy, really--" "This is what I'm going to work for," Frederica said, "to teach women to teach men! It's our job, because women are more intelligent than men." "I don't think Mother is more intelligent than Father," Laura demurred. Fred swallowed her opinion of the collective Childses' intelligence; "I've thought it all out," she said; "I'm going to give my life up to urging women to set the pace! And we've both of us got to marry men who will join our crusade." "They won't," Laura prophesied; then added, with sudden, frowning decision: "anyhow, so far as I'm concerned, it doesn't matter. I'm not going to marry anybody." Fred gave her a quick look. "Why?" "Well, I don't want to."