the
sewing-machine, with somebody to cut and somebody to baste, and I will
get 'em all turned out by sundown. But they feet! Mis' Mayberry, could
we get Jem into shoes, do you reckon? About how many bad stumped toes
is they in Providence now?"

"Well," answered Mother Mayberry reflectively, "I don't know about but
two, but we can ask 'Liza Pike. Thank you for your plan, honey-bird,
and we're a-going to put it through so as to be a credit to you.
Children are sorter going out of style these days and I'm proud to make
a show of our'n. Women's leaving babies outen they calculations is
kinder like cutting buds offen the tree of life, and I'm glad no sech
fashion have struck Harpeth Hills yet."

"Now, ain't that the truth?" exclaimed the Widow Pratt. "Sometimes when
I read some of the truck about what women have took a notion to turn
out and do in the world, I get right skeered about what are a-going to
happen to the babies and men in the time to come."

"Don't worry about 'em, Bettie," laughed Mother Mayberry, with a
quizzical sparkle in her eyes. "Even when women have got that right to
march in the front rank with the men and carry some of the flags, that
they are a-contending for, they'll always be some foolish enough to lag
behind with babies on they breasts, a string of children following and
with always a snack in her pocket to feed the broke down front-rankers,
men or women. You'll find most Providence women in that tag-gang, I'm
thinking; but let's do our part in whooping on the other sisters that
have got wrongs to right."

"I suppose the world really has done women injustice in lots of ways,"
said the singer lady plaintively, for she had very lately, for the
first time in her life, felt the
sit-still-and-hold-your-hands-while-he-rides-away grind, and it had
struck in deep.

"Yes, I suppose so," answered Mother Mayberry, as she picked up little
Hoover, who was nodding like a top-heavy petunia in a breeze, and
stretched him across her lap for a nap. "But as long as she have got
the spanking of man sprouts from they one to ten years she oughter make
out to get in a vote to suit herself, as time comes along, especially
if she have picked her husband right."

"She--she can't--can't pick her husband," hazarded the singer lady
desperately.

"Yes, she can, honey-child," answered Mother Mayberry comfortably. "The
smile in her eye and the switch of her skirts is a woman's borned-vote,
and she can elect herself wife