Jane didn’t throw any rocks at anybody’s opinions or break the windows of anybody’s prejudices.  She had the most lovely heart to heart talks with the women separately, collectively, and in both small and large bunches.  I had them in to tea in the combinations that she wanted them, and I must say that she was the loveliest thing with them that could be imagined.  She was just her stiff, ugly self, starchily clad in the most beautifully tailored white linen, and they all went mad about her.  The Pup and the Kit clutched at her skirts until anybody else would have been a mass of wrinkles, and the left breast of her linen blouse did always bear a slight impress of little Ned’s head.  The congeniality of Jane and that baby was a revelation to me and his colic ceased after the first time she kneaded it out of his fat little stomach with her long, slim, powerful hands according to a first-aid method she had learned in her settlement work, with Mamie looking on in fear and adoration.  It may have been bloodless surgery but I suspect it of being partly hypnotism, because the same sort of surgery was used on the minds of all my women friends and with a like result.

The subject of the rally was a fine one for everybody to get together on from the start and, before any of them realized that they were doing anything but plan out the details of a big spread, the like of which they had been doing for hospitable generations, for the railroad Commission, they were organized into a flourishing Equality League, with officers and by-laws and a sinking fund in the treasury.

“Now, Evelina,” said Jane, as she sat on the edge of my bed braiding her heavy, sleek, black braid that is as big as my wrist and that she declares is her one beauty, though she ought to know that her straight, strong-figure, ruddy complexion, aroma of strength and keen, near-sighted eyes are—­well, if not beauties, something very winning, “we must not allow the men time to get sore over this matter of the League.  We must make them feel immediately that they are needed and wanted intensely in the movement.  They must be asked to take their place, shoulder to shoulder, with us in this fight for better conditions for the world and mankind in general.  True to our theory we must offer them our comradely affection and openly and honestly express our need of them in our lives and in our activities.  I was talking to Mrs. Carruthers and Nell and Mrs. Hall and Caroline, as well as your Cousin Martha, about it this afternoon and they all agreed with me that the men would have cause to be aggrieved at us about seeming thus to be organizing a life for ourselves apart from theirs, with no place in it provided for them.  Mrs. Carruthers said that she had felt that the Reverend Mr. Haley had been deeply hurt already at not being masked to open any of the meetings with prayer, and she volunteered to talk to him and express for herself and us our need of him.”

“That will be easy for Sallie, for she has been expressing need of people in her fife as long as she has been living it,” I answered with a good-natured laugh, though I would have liked to have that interview with the Dominie myself.  He is so enthusiastic that I like to bask in him once in a while.