Kate greeted her hostess, and looked about her for the guest of honor.  It transpired that the affair was quite informal, after all.  The Englishwoman was sitting in a tea-tent discoursing with a number of gentlemen who hung over her with polite attentions.  They were well-known bachelors of advanced ideas—­men with honorary titles and personal ambitions.  The great suffragist was very much at home with them.  Her deep, musical voice resounded like a bell as she uttered her dicta and her witticisms.  She—­like the men—­was smoking a cigarette, a feat which she performed without coquetry or consciousness.  She was smoking because she liked to smoke.  It took no more than a glance to reveal the fact that she was further along in her pregnancy than Marna—­Marna who started back from the door when a stranger appeared at it lest she should seem immodest.  But the suffragette, having acquired an applauding and excellent husband, saw no reason why she should apologize to the world for the processes of nature.  Quite as unconscious of her condition as of her unconventionality in smoking, she discoursed with these diverted men, her transparent frock revealing the full beauties of her neck and bust, her handsome arms well displayed—­frankly and insistently feminine, yet possessing herself without hesitation of what may be termed the masculine attitude toward life.

For some reason which Kate did not attempt to define, she refrained from discussing the Bureau of Children with the celebrated suffragette, although she did not doubt that the Englishwoman would have been capable of keen and valuable criticism.  Instead, she returned to the city, sent a box of violets to Marna, and then went on to her attic room.

A letter was awaiting her from the West.  It read: 

     “MY DEAR MISS BARRINGTON:—­

“Honora and the kiddies are here.  I have given my cousin a room where she can see the mountains on two sides, and I hope it will help.  I’ve known the hills to help, even with pretty rough customers.  It won’t take a creature like Honora long to get hold of the secret, will it?  You know what I mean, I guess.

“I wish you had come.  I watched the turn in the drive to see if you wouldn’t be in the station wagon.  There were two women’s heads.  I recognized Honora’s, and I tried to think the second one was yours, but I really knew it wasn’t.  It was a low head—­one of that patient sort of heads—­and a flat, lid-like hat.  The nurse’s, of course!  I suppose you wear helmet-shaped hats with wings on them—­something like Mercury’s or Diana’s.  Or don’t they sell that kind of millinery nowadays?

“Honora tells me you’re trying to run the world and that you make up to all kinds of people—­hold-up men as well as preachers.  Do you know, I’m something like that myself?  I can’t help it, but I do seem to enjoy folks.  One of the pleasantest nights I ever spent was with a lot of bandits in a