"I didn't say I'd quit working," said E. Eliot. "I said I'd quit business. That's another thing. There's plenty of real work in the world that won't earn you a living. Lord! Don't I see it going by right here in this office! There are things I just itch to get my hands into, and I have to wait and tell myself 'some day, perhaps!' There's a thing I'd like to do now, and that's to take a hand in this political campaign for district attorney. It would kill my business deader than Pharaoh's aunt, so I've got to let it go. But it would certainly put your friend George Remington up a tall tree." "Oh, you're a suffragist, then?" Betty exclaimed eagerly. "I was wondering about that. I've never seen you at any of our meetings." "I'm a suffragist, all right," said E. Eliot, "but as your meetings are mostly held in the afternoons, when I'm pretty busy, I haven't been able to get 'round. "I'm curious about Remington," she went on. "I've known him a little, for years. When I worked for Allen, I used to see him quite often in the office. And I'd always rather liked him. So that I was surprised, clear down to the ground, when I read that statement of his in the _Sentinel_. I'd never thought he was _that_ sort. And from the fact that you work in his office and like him well enough to call him George one might almost suppose he wasn't." Clearly Betty was puzzled. "Of course," she said, "I think his views about women are obsolete and ridiculous. But I don't see what they've got to do with liking him or not, personally." E. Eliot's smile became grim again, but she said nothing, so Betty asked a direct question. "That was what you meant, wasn't it?" "Yes," the other woman said, "that was what I meant. Why, if you don't mind plain speaking, it's been my observation that the sort of men who think the world is too indecent for decent women to go out into, generally have their own reasons for knowing how indecent it is; and that when they spring a line of talk like that, they're being sickening hypocrites into the bargain." Betty's face had gone flame color. "George isn't like that at all," she said. "He's--he's really fine. He's old-fashioned and sentimental about women, but he isn't a hypocrite. He really means those things he says. Why..." And then Betty went on to tell her new friend about Cousin Emelene and Alys Brewster-Smith, and how George, though he writhed, had stood the gaff. "A grown-up man," E. Eliot summed up, "who honestly believes that women are made of something fine and fragile, and that they ought to be kept where even the wind can't blow upon them! But good heavens, child, if he really means that, it makes it all the better for what I was thinking of. You don't understand, of course. I hadn't meant to tell you, but I've changed my mind.