The Rising Tide

a client or two! Of course, her commissions did not quite pay for the advertisi

ence, of course. You remind me of the old lady, Fred, who bought eggs for twenty-four cents a dozen and sold them fo

you begin you've got to put up something.

t," he pr

la-rack and was sitting on her office table, showing a candid and very pretty leg i

piscopal church is six feet short[Pg 57] of half a mile! I wish I had a motor to run

at alarming suggestion, and I told him

ed. He's going to haul me round in his go-cart to look at some flats. Trouble is, I can't charge my fu

s? It's the same thing. Strikes me Howard h

u've got me on your shoulders, like the aged Anchises, and you hoped that Howard might come to t

they think (not having seen you) that you are a 'sweet g

rl'! Me, a '

orry. Yo

lease you? Very likely they think I'm tr

aught me.[Pg 58] You are a perfect nuisa

mped, pounced, then put his nose on the floor between his paws and wagged his hindquarters. "No, sir!" she told him, "not yet!" And he crouched down again, patiently curling a furtive tongue over the toe of her shoe. "Ho

elf and approv

ne," she said, "and h

s perfectl

-à-tête couldn't have given a reaso

cou

"I thought better of you than that! T

applauded him. "But there is a very excellent re

she de

less agreea

!" She pulled down the top of her desk and slipped the loop of the puppy's leash on her wrist. "As for smoking," she confessed, "I'

t, because we make fools of ourselves, you will make fools of you

aid you must clear out," she said; "

flashed into his mind, and made him smile. What a contrast! "But this interests Fred," he thought; "and the petticoated easy-chairs don't. And the only thing that makes life endurable is an interest." He wondered, vaguely, what interests he had himself. Certainly his trustee accounts were not very vital interests! It occurred to him, watching Fred thrust some long and vicious pins through

n," sai

or five minutes until Howard came, brakes on, against th

was climbing into the car; then opened his throttle, and Mr. Weston,

head of everybody!" he reflecte

hen they reached South G Street, leaving Zip on guard in the auto, he went all over the flat with her, and said the kitchenette was a slick place, but the bath-room was small-"and dark," he objected, follo

better arrangements for storing away the kindling, nor would they have trampled a negligent plumber more completely underfoot than did Frederica Payton. She had sent Howard flying in his car to bring the man, and she stood over him

satisfaction as old as the cave-dweller's who hung skin

dmiration. "It's funny that you can do this sort of thing," he wav

loot. If I'd thought they'd wanted a silk h

e a woman's instinct comes

try to please a customer is only common sense. As for me, I hate all

clined, for nearly an hour; the empty flat, the wintry dusk

had seen[Pg 62] at Beasley's. "I bought a g

when the world is just buzzing with real things! For instance

in any department of science, helps the world, finally, a blamed-sight more than most of this hot air that the reformers turn on. It isn'

t you say 'one single woman like Madame Curie

id, grinning. "

y, "You are the limit!" And added what he thought of her p

like me-when yo

he contradicted, wi

he sofa, she grew more and more daring in her talk; her face, flushing with[Pg 63] excitement, was vividly handsome, and her mind was as vivid as her face; he could hardly keep up with her mind! She was

free talk, the very tingle and exhilaration of the shock makes her strike out into still deeper water.... She talked about herself; of he

" Howard sa

imores were born. What do you think? The day Mother was married, her father said to her (she told me this herself!), 'Remember, Ellen, your husban

rassed knowledge of that "past

-I mean indecent," she corrected herself, with the satisfaction of finding a more striking word; "

s," Fred said, with a shrug, "there's going to be lots of reform along that line. To merely rear children is a pretty poor job for an intellectual being. D

y," h

ummer, she said, and take occasional days off from business, and get up a rattling good speech on woman suffrage-"and sex-slavery. The abolishment of that is what we're really working for, and it will come when we face Truth! Until now, women have been fed up o

ll stay there at night, all

rse. Wh

g

ou be fr

at of? Would yo

hat he would not be what you'd

rl be frightened? I s

en belittle this vital and terrible subject, even as creeds sometimes belittle Religion. To Fred's mind, as to many serious minds,

came up against this-this, I don't know what to call it! this stirring, among women. Every woman (except fat old dames whose minds stopped growing when they had their first baby) is stirred, somehow. Twenty years from now the women who are girls to-day won't be putting picture puzzles together for want of something better to do." The contempt in her voice revealed nothing to Howard[Pg 66] Maitland, who scarcely knew the poor, dull lady in the sitting-room on Payton Street; but he wondered why Fred's face suddenly reddened. "

imile,"

motive power. It's bigger than just-people. Even our parlor-maid, Flora, feels it! She wants to do something; she doesn't know what. (I wish she'd

suffrage-which, as Frederica Payton had very truly said, is only a symptom, alarming, or amusing, or divine

egs-"gosh, I take off my hat to you!" His admiration was not so much for the thing she was trying to do, as for the fact that she was trying! She was doing something-anything!-instead of sitting around,

she said, made her quiver into momentary silence, as a harp-string quivers under a twanging and muting thumb. That his assents, which gave her such acute satisfaction, were merely her own convictions, thrown back to her by the sounding-board of his good nature, she did not realize. The intellectual attraction she felt in him was hers

me, that the man's past isn't my business. There'll be no Mortimores in mine

ey will!"

an ankle with each hand, her eyes glowing in

I'd rather talk to you

flesh and made her wince with pain and break away; but with the pain there was a curious pang of pleasure.

nk they'll smell cigarette-smoke? I suppose they'd have a fit

weet girl'?" he said,

oke. It gave me quite a shock to

u expect? I like you to. You kno

w when he was young, before the flood, some girl turned him down, and I understand he's never got over it. The cousins will think I'm trying to[Pg 69] catch him on the rebound! Funn

so altruist

own to the entrance in silence. Howard, cranking his car, and getting a slap on the wrist that m

he Assembly. They had talked about his gloria-matis, and she had thrilled at i

," he told her, with some amusement

," she said, looking down at the toe of her

man's brain

g?" Laura objected, her eyes crinkling good-n

: "'Course not! I only meant s

here with her, but I'd promised Jack McKnight to play tennis. Well, I'm afraid I wouldn't have gone, anyhow," she added, soberly; "those things bother Father, and it isn't as if I could

ake a bungalow out in Lakeville this summer, and live there all by

really startled. "You don'

she

, really, it wouldn't be safe. She o

's own argument: "Why shouldn't she

s!" said Laura. "And, besides, nobody

ng," Howard said. For once the

like Fred-" she began,

t like Fred! You couldn't

promised this dance to Jack McKni

g

neck," Howard declare

ngagement in the air. "The girl's perfectly fine, but the man makes me tired," sa

d holding hers, and the other spre

and I don't know that it's-really o

head a little vicio