“It’s the same she has always used on me, only this is more dramatic.  Beware!” I said with a laugh as I insisted on just one squeeze of Jane’s white linen arm as she was climbing back into the car.

“That’s a remarkably fine child and she should have good, dependable, business-like habits put in the place of faulty and useless ones.  Her profanity will make no difference for the present and can be easily corrected.  Don’t interfere with her attending to my commissions, Evelina.  Let’s start, Mr. Hayes.”  And Jane settled herself calmly for the spin out Providence Road.

“All the hundred dollars all by herself, Jane?” I called after them.

“Yes,” floated back positively in the wake of the Hupp.

For several hours I attended to the business of my life in a haze of meditation.  If Henrietta ticks off the same number of minutes on the woman-clock from Jane’s standpoint, that Jane has marked off from her own mother’s, high noon is going to strike before we are ready for it.

But it was only an hour or two of high-minded communing with the future that I got the time for, before I was involved in the whirl of dust that swirled around the storm center, to darken and throw a shadow over Glendale about the time of the publication of the Glendale News, which occurs every Thursday near the hour of noon, so that all the subscribers can take that enterprising sheet home to consume while waiting for dinner, and can leave it for the women of their families to enjoy in the afternoon.

I suspect that the digestion of Jane’s Equality rally invitation interfered with the digestion of much fried chicken, corn, and sweet potatoes, under the roof-trees of the town and I spent the afternoon in hearing results and keeping up the spirits of the insurgents.

Caroline came in with her head so high that she had difficulty in seeing over her very slender and aristocratic nose, with a note from Lee Greenfield which had just come to her, asking her to go with him in his car over to Hillsboro to spend the day with Tom Pollard’s wife, a visit he knows she has been dying to make for two months, for she was one of Pet’s bridesmaids.  He made casual and dastardly mention that there would be a moon to come home by, but ignored completely the fact that Tuesday was the day on which he had been invited by the League, of which he knew she was a member, to meet and rally around the C. & G. Commission.

I helped her compose the answer, and I must say we hit Lee only in high spots.  I could see she was scared to death, and so was I, but her dander was up, and I backed mine up along side it for the purpose of support.  Besides I feel in my heart that that note will dynamite the rocky old situation between them into something more easily handled.

She had just gone to dispatch the missive by their negro gardener when Mamie and Sallie came clucking in.  Mamie’s face was pink and high-spirited, but Sallie was in one complete slump of mind and body.