"Bud, have you suspected anything about Miss Fletcher? Her health, I mean?" "Yes. I've studied about her, too." "And kept quiet, eh?" "Sure! But, Uncle Davie, if we--" Martin blessed him for that "we"--"if we could get her outside of herself, it would do a lot for her. I've a hunch that you have let her get on the shelf. I wouldn't if I were you! I know it may be necessary to keep her to rules, but she thinks too much about the rules; they cramp her. When Nancy marries--what then?" "The Lord knows!" "Where's that other girl--Joan?" Martin's face hardened. "Living her life. _Her_ life," he said. "Anything--dirty about it?" Cameron asked. "No. So far as I can find out, she's just taking what she calls _her own_." "Well, why shouldn't she, Uncle Dave? By all that's holy why shouldn't a woman have her own as well as a fellow? Just because she was born to petticoats doesn't mean that she's born to all the jobs men don't want." "There are certain things the world exacts of a woman, Bud." "What, for instance, Uncle Dave?" Martin considered. He was a just man, but he was prejudiced. "Self-sacrifice, for one thing!" "Who says so? Who benefits most by her self-sacrifice?" Cameron flushed as he rambled on. "We may split on this rock, Uncle," he blurted. "Think of my mother--I sort of resent it, because I _am_ a man, that we idealize virtues and plaster them on women when we know jolly well, if we lathered them on ourselves, we'd cave in under them. It's up to the woman! That's what I say. Let her select her own little virtues and see to it that she squares it with her soul and then men--well, men keep to the right and keep moving!" Having flared forth, Cameron laughed at his own fireworks. "Joan is selfish, Nancy quite the reverse." Martin's brows drew together. "Don't be an ass, Bud!" "What's this Joan doing?" "Thinking she's gifted," snapped Martin. "How is she to find out if she doesn't try? Is Miss Fletcher paying for the racket?" "No. That's the rub. The girl's paying for it herself. Smudging herself doing it, too. A woman can't escape the smudge." "Oh! well"--Cameron was tiring of it all--"it's when the smudge sticks that counts. If it is only skin deep, it doesn't matter." "But--a woman, Bud--well, skin matters in a woman." "Who says so? Oh! chuck it, Uncle Dave. Which shall it be--bed for an hour or a rarebit at Tumbles and then--on to the fight?" "What time is it?" "Eleven-thirty." "Bud, let us have another look at our salvage before we choose; if we find them sleeping, we'll take the rarebit as a recompense for a night's sleep." And together they went out into the night. Two tired men who had done a stiff day's work--but felt that they must make sure before they sought rest for themselves. * * * * * And Joan and Patricia faced the epidemic as so many of the young did--nothing really _could_ happen to them, they believed--and Chicago was not paying so heavy a toll.