business," Betty told her rather frostily.
Was the woman merely making fun of her?

E. Eliot caught the note. "I meant my question seriously," she said. "It
has a certain importance. But I didn't mean to interrupt you. Go ahead."
"Well," Betty said, "that's about all. George--Mr. Remington--that
is--is running for district attorney, and he has come out against
suffrage as you know. I thought perhaps this was a chance to convert
him a little. It would be a great favor to him, anyway, if you took
the cottages; because he doesn't know whom to turn to, if you won't. I
didn't come to try to tell you what your duty is, but I thought perhaps
you hadn't just looked at it that way."

"All right," said E. Eliot. "Now I'll tell you how I do look at it. In
the first place, about doing business for women. It all depends on the
woman you're doing business with. If she's had the business training
of a man, she's as easy to deal with as a man. If she's never had any
business training at all, if business doesn't mean anything to her
except some vague hocus-pocus that produces her income, then she's seven
kinds of a Tartar.

"She has no more notion about what she has a right to expect from other
people, or what they've a right to expect from her, than a white Angora
cat. Of course, the majority of women who have property to attend to
have had it dumped on their hands in middle life, or after, by the wills
of loving husbands. Those women, I'll say frankly, are the devil and all
to deal with. But it's their husbands' and fathers' fault, and not their
own. Anyhow, that isn't the reason I wouldn't take those cottages.

"It was the cottages themselves, and not the woman who owned them, that
decided me. That whole Kentwood district is a disgrace to civilization.
The sanitary conditions are filthy; have been for years. The owners have
been resisting condemnation proceedings right along, on the ground
that the houses brought in so little rental that it would be practical
confiscation to compel them to make any improvements. Now, since the
war boon struck the mills, and every place with four walls and a roof is
full, they're saying they can't afford to make any change because of the
frightful loss they'd suffer in potential profits.

"Well, when you agree to act as a person's agent, you've got to act in
that person's interest; and when it's a question of the interest of the
owners of those Kentwood cottages, whether they're men or women, my i