t?
You're chaperoning me, I hope you realize! I'm rather difficile, too.
Genevieve, Pudge is outside; he'll take you out and buy you something
cold. I took him to lunch today. It was disgraceful! Except for a
frightful-looking mess called German Pot Roast With Carrots and Noodles
Sixty, he ate nothing but melon, lemon-meringue pie, and pineapple
special. I was absolutely ashamed! George, I would have speech with
you."

"Private business, Betty?" he asked pleasantly. "My wife may not have
the vote, but I trust her with all my affairs!"

"Indeed, I'm not in the least interested!" Genevieve said saucily.

She knew George was pleased with her as she went happily away.

"It's just as well Jinny went," said Betty, when she and the
district-attorney-elect were alone. "Because it's that old bore Colonel
Jaynes! He's come again, and he says he _will_ see you!"

Deep red rose in George's handsome face.

"He came here last week, and he came yesterday," Betty said, sitting
down, "and really I think you should see him! You see, George, in that
far-famed article of yours, you remarked that 'a veteran of the civil
as well as the Spanish war' had told you that it was the restless
outbreaking of a few northern women that helped to precipitate the
national catastrophe, and he wants to know if you meant him!"

"I named no names!" George said, with dignity, yet uneasily, too.

"I know you didn't. But you see we haven't many veterans of _both_
wars," Betty went on, pleasantly. "And of course old Mrs. Jaynes is a
rabid suffragist, and she is simply hopping. He's a mild old man,
you know, and evidently he wants to square things with 'Mother.' Now,
George, who _did_ you mean?"

"A statement like that may be made in a general sense," George remarked,
after scowling thought.

"You might have made the statement on your own hook," Betty conceded,
"but when you mention an anonymous Colonel, of course they all sit up!
He says that he's going to get a signed statement from you that _he_
never said that, and publish it!"

"Ridiculous!" said George.

"Then here are two letters," Betty pursued. "One is from the
corresponding secretary of the Women's Non-partisan Pacific Coast
Association. She says that they would be glad to hear from you regarding
your statement that equal suffrage, in the western states, is an
acknowledged failure."

"She'll wait!" George predicted grimly.

"Yes, I suppose so. But she's written to our Mrs. Herrington