nd theaters?"

"Why not?" asked Miss Hicks. "You see, they're only human. I'll bet you
could land every vote in the bunch if you went at it scientifically."

"But--"

"Oh, I know they're not pretty," said Miss Hicks. "But they cast the
most bee-you-ti-ful votes you ever saw."

"What you mean," I said, "is that if we don't show those girls a
superlatively good time this winter we won't get a look at the election
next spring?"

"They'd be awfully shocked if you put it that way," said Miss Hicks;
"and I wouldn't advise you to talk to them about it. Their notions of
honor are so high that I had to pay for the lemonade for the independent
men myself at the last election."

"Oh, very well," says I, taking my hat, "we'll think it over."

"You might wear blinders, you know," she suggested.

"Oh, go to thunder!" said I as earnestly as I could.

"Come again," she said when she closed the door after me. "I do so enjoy
these little confidences."

Honestly, Miss Allstairs, when I think of that girl I shrink up until
I'm afraid I'll fall into my own hat. It ought not to be legal for a
girl to talk to a man like that. It's inhuman.

We thought matters over for two weeks and tried one or two little raids
on the enemy with most horrible results to ourselves. Then we gave in.
We put our pride and our devotion to art in cold storage and took up the
politicians' burden. We gave those girls the time of their
young-to-middle-aged lives. We got up dances and crokinole parties and
concerts for them. We took them to see Hamlet. We had sleighing parties.
We helped every lecture course in the college do a rushing business. We
just backed into the shafts and took the bit without a murmur. And maybe
you think those girls didn't drive us. They seemed determined to make up
for the drought of all the past. They were as coy and uncertain and as
infernally hard to please as if they'd been used to getting one proposal
a day and two on Sunday. Let one of us so much as drop over to Browning
Hall to pass the time of day with one of the real heart-disturbers, and
the particular vote that he was courting would go off the reservation
for a week. It would take a pair of theater tickets at the least to
square things.

We gave dances that winter at which only one in five girls could dance.
We took moonlight strolls with ladies who could remember the moon of
seventy-six, and we gave strawrides to girls who insisted on talking
history of art and miss