t zest. It was the winter that the term Feminism first reached
the United States, and books on the greater freedom of women and their
liberalization burst into print and popularity.

On the suffrage question Ruth had always been prettily "on the fence,"
and "Oh, dear, do let's talk of something else," she would laugh, while
her eyes invited. Her dinner partners were always willing.

"On the fence, Kidlet," Edith had once remonstrated to Ruth, "that's
stupid!" Edith herself was strongly anti. "Of course I'm anti," she
maintained proudly. "Anybody who _is_ anybody in Hilton is anti. The
suffragists--dear me! Perfect freaks--most of them. People you never
heard of! I peeked in at a suffrage tea the other day and mercy, such
sights! I wouldn't be one of them for money. We're to give an anti-ball
here in Hilton. I'm a patroness. Name to be printed alongside Mrs.
ex-Governor Vaile's. How's that? 'On the fence,' Ruth! Why, good
heavens, there's simply no two sides to the question. You come along to
this anti-ball and you'll see, Kiddie!"

Well, as I said, Ruth went one day to a suffrage meeting in town. She
had never heard the question discussed from a platform. When she came
into the house about six o'clock, she was so full of enthusiasm that she
didn't stop to go upstairs. She came right into the room where Will and
I were reading by the cretonne-shaded lamp.

"I've just been to the most wonderful lecture!" she burst out, "on
suffrage! I never cared a thing about the vote one way or the other, but
I do now. I'm _for_ it. Heart and soul, I'm for it! Oh, the most
wonderful woman spoke. Every word she said applied straight to me. I
didn't know I had such ideas until that woman got up and put them into
words for me. They've been growing and ripening in me all these years,
and I didn't know it--not until today. That woman said that sacrifices
are made again and again to send boys to college and prepare them to
earn a living, but that girls are brought up simply to be pretty and
attractive, so as to capture a man who will provide them with food and
clothes. Why, Lucy, don't you see that that's just what happened in
_our_ family? We slaved to send Oliver and Malcolm through college--but
for _you_ and for _me_--what slaving was there done to prepare us to
earn a living? Just think what I might be had _I_ been prepared for life
like Malcolm or Oliver, instead of wasting all my years frivoling. Why,
don't you see I could have convi