dea
was that I didn't care for the job."

"I think you're perfectly right about it," Betty said. "I wouldn't
have come to urge you to change your mind, if I had understood what the
situation was. But," here she held out her hand, "I'm glad I did come,
and I wish we might meet again sometime and get acquainted and talk
about things."

"No time like the present," said E. Eliot. "Sit down again, if you've
got a minute." She added, as Betty dropped back into her chair, "You're
Elizabeth Sheridan, aren't you?--Judge Sheridan's daughter? And you're
working as a stenographer for Remington and Evans?"

Betty nodded and stammered out the beginning of an apology for not
having introduced herself earlier. But the older woman waved this aside.

"What I really want to know," she went on, "if it isn't too outrageous
a question, is what on earth you're doing it for--working in that law
office, I mean?"

It was a question Betty was well accustomed to answering. But coming
from this source, it surprised her into a speechless stare.

"Why," she said at last, "I do it because I believe in economic
independence for women. Don't you? But of course you do."

"I don't know," said E. Eliot. "I believe in food and clothes, and money
to pay the rent, and the only way I have ever found of having those
things was to get out and earn them. But if ever I make money enough to
give me an independent income half the size of what yours must be, I'll
retire from business in short order."

"Do you know," said Betty, "I don't believe you would. I think you're
mistaken. I don't believe a woman like you could live without working."

"I didn't say I'd quit working," said E. Eliot. "I said I'd quit
business. That's another thing. There's plenty of real work in the world
that won't earn you a living. Lord! Don't I see it going by right here
in this office! There are things I just itch to get my hands into, and
I have to wait and tell myself 'some day, perhaps!' There's a thing I'd
like to do now, and that's to take a hand in this political campaign for
district attorney. It would kill my business deader than Pharaoh's aunt,
so I've got to let it go. But it would certainly put your friend George
Remington up a tall tree."

"Oh, you're a suffragist, then?" Betty exclaimed eagerly. "I was
wondering about that. I've never seen you at any of our meetings."

"I'm a suffragist, all right," said E. Eliot, "but as your meetings are
mostly held in the aftern