re of
mother while I'm away."

"Ay tank sometime she take care of me," Christine smilingly replied.

Avoiding family matters, Ida talked on general subjects while the rest
listened. She over-estimated Bradley's education, his reading, but he
was profoundly thankful for it. He had never heard such talk. It was
literature to him. She spoke with such fine deliberation and such
choice of words. He felt its grace and power without understanding it.
It seemed to him wonderful.

"I should like to be a novelist," she said. "I'd like to treat of this
woman's movement."

"Why can't you do it?" he asked.

"I lack the time, the freedom from other interests. But if I could be a
novelist, it would be a novelist of life."

He never remembered all that she said, but she made an impression that
was almost despair upon him by her incidental mention of books that he
had never read, and of authors of whom he had never even heard.

They walked to the church together along the side-walks littered with
fallen leaves, and when they entered the side door she began to
introduce him to the ladies who swarmed about her the moment they
caught sight of her. Bradley felt embarrassed by their multiple
presence, but was proud to be introduced by Ida. They moved to the
platform. He had never spoken at such a meeting before and he was
nervous. He spoke first and spoke well, but he would have done better
with Ida's face before him. When she spoke he sat looking up at the
beautiful head and feeling rather than seeing the splendid lines of her
broad, powerful and unconfined waist. The perfume of her dress and its
soft rustle as she moved to and fro before him made him forget her
words.

Cargill came up to the platform after the speaking and said jocosely,
"Well, Legislator, you're getting ahead. You're laying a foundation for
post-mortem fame, anyway. I hear you've been on to Congress."

"Yes, I went on and stayed a few days."

"How'd you like it?"

"How do you do, Mr. Cargill," said Ida at his elbow. "Aren't you out of
place here?"

"Not more than usual," replied Cargill. "I'm always out of place."

"Do you know Mr. Birdsell?" she asked, presenting a powerful young man
with a singularly handsome face. He had clear brown eyes and a big,
graceful mustache. For just a moment as he stood beside Ida, Bradley
shivered with a sudden suspicion that they were lovers.

"Mr. Birdsell happens to be on from Muscatene," Ida explained, "and
happened in