tep, Mrs. Brewster-Smith stepped in,
immaculate as to sheer collar and cuffs, crisp and tailored as to suit,
waved and netted as to hair, and chilled steel and diamond point as to
will-power.

"Oh, Genevieve, I didn't see _you_ there! I didn't know why they stood
there waiting so long. I know the house so well I knew of course which
room you'll have for guests. _Dear_ old house! It will be like returning
to my childhood to live here again!" She cocked an ear toward the upper
regions and frowned, but went on smoothly.

"Such happy girlhood hours as I have passed here! After all there is
nothing like the home feeling, is there, for us women at any rate!
We're the natural conservatives, who cling to the simple, elemental
satisfactions, and there's a heart-hunger that can only be satisfied
by a home and a man's protection! I thought George's description too
beautiful ... in his article you know... of the ideal home with the
women of the family safe within its walls, protected from the savagery
of the economic struggle which only men in their strength can bear
without being crushed."

She turned quickly and terribly to the expressmen coming down the stairs
and said in so fierce a voice that they shrank back visibly, "There's
another trunk to take up to the room next to that. And if you let it
down with the bang you did this one, you'll get something that will
surprise you! Do you hear me!"

They shrank out, cowed and tiptoeing. Mrs. Brewster-Smith turned back
to her young cousin-by-marriage and murmured, "That was such a true
and deep saying of George's... wherever does such a young man get his
wisdom!... that women are not fitted by nature to cope with hostile
forces!"

Cousin Emelene approached from behind the statue of Genevieve, still
frozen in place with an expression of stupefaction on her white face.
The older woman put her arms around the bride's neck and gave her an
affectionate hug.

"Oh, dearest Jinny, doesn't it seem like a dream that we're all going to
be together, all we women, in a real home, with a real man at the head
of it to direct us and give us of his strength! It does seem just like
that beautiful old-fashioned home that George drew such an exquisite
picture of, in his article, where the home was the center of the world
to the women in it. It will be to me, I assure you, dear. I feel as
though I had come to a haven, and as though I _never_ would want to
leave it!"

The expressmen were carrying