to say she had not only read
novels for a long time, but she had had to read them from a grave
design. "It does very well for me," she said, "but it easily mightn't
for you. Alston, why don't you run away?"

Alston stared at her.

"Would you like to go abroad?" he asked her then, "with Mary? Would you
like me to take you?"

"Oh, no," said Mrs. Choate. "Mary wouldn't want to. She's bewitched with
those French girls. And I don't want to. I couldn't go the only way I'd
like."

"You could go any way you chose," said Alston, touched. He knew there
was a war chest, and it irked him to think his mother wouldn't have it
tapped for her.

"Oh, no," said she. "I should need to be slim and light, and put on
short petticoats and ride horses and get away from tigers. I don't want
to shoot them, but I'd rather like to get away from them."

"Mother," said Alston, "what's come over you? Is it this book?"

She laughed, in an easy good-humour.

"Books don't come over me," said she. "I believe it's that old Madame
Beattie."

"What's Madame Beattie done that any--" he paused; Esther's wrongs at
Madame Beattie's hands were too red before him--"that any lady would be
willing to do?"

"I really don't know, Alston," said his mother frankly. "It's only that
when I think of that old party going out every night--"

"Not every night."

"Well, when she likes, and getting up on a platform and telling goodness
knows what to the descendants of the oldest civilisations, and their
bringing her home on their shoulders--"

"No, no, mother, they don't do that."

"I tell you what it makes me feel, Alston: it makes me feel _fat_."

"Madame Beattie weighs twenty pounds more than you do, and she's not so
tall by three inches."

"And then I realise that when women say they want to vote, it isn't
because they're all piously set on saving the country. It's because
they've peeped over the fence and got an idea of the game, and they're
crazy to be in it."

"But, mother, there's no game, except a dirty one of graft and politics.
There's nothing in it."

"No," said Mrs. Choate. "There isn't in most games. But people play
them."

"You don't think Amabel is in it for the game?"

"Oh, no! Amabel's a saint. It wouldn't take more than a basket of wood
and a bunch of matches to make her a martyr."

"But, mother," said Alston, "you belong to the antis."

"Do I?" asked his mother. "Yes, I believe I do."

"Do you mean to say you're not sincere?"