7.  Sylvia’s part in this adventure was a nobler one than mine, Seated as I was in a regal motor-car, and in company with one favoured of all the gods in the world, I must have had an intense conviction of my own saintliness not to distrust my excitement.  But Sylvia, for her part, had nothing to get from me but pain.  I talked of the factory-fires and the horrors of the sugar-refineries, and I saw shadow after shadow of suffering cross her face.  You may say it was cruel of me to tear the veil from those lovely eyes, but in such a matter I felt myself the angel of the Lord and His vengeance.

“I didn’t know about these things!” she cried again.  And I found it was true.  It would have been hard for me to imagine anyone so ignorant of the realities of modern life.  The men and women she had met she understood quite miraculously, but they were only two kinds, the “best people” and their negro servants.  There had been a whole regiment of relatives on guard to keep her from knowing anybody else, or anything else, and if by chance a dangerous fact broke into the family stockade, they had formulas ready with which to kill it.

“But now,” Sylvia went on, “I’ve got some money, and I can help, so I dare not be ignorant any longer.  You must show me the way, and my husband too.  I’m sure he doesn’t know what can be done.”

I said that I would do anything in my power.  Her help would be invaluable, not merely because of the money she might give, but because of the influence of her name; the attention she could draw to any cause she chose.  I explained to her the aims and the methods of our child-labour committee.  We lobbied to get new legislation; we watched officials to compel them to enforce the laws already existing; above all, we worked for publicity, to make people realise what it meant that the new generation was growing up without education, and stunted by premature toil.  And that was where she could help us most—­if she would go and see the conditions with her own eyes, and then appear before the legislative committee this winter, in favour of our new bill!

She turned her startled eyes upon me at this.  Her ideas of doing good in the world were the old-fashioned ones of visiting and almsgiving; she had no more conception of modern remedies than she had of modern diseases.  “Oh, I couldn’t possibly make a speech!” she exclaimed.

“Why not?” I asked.

“I never thought of such a thing.  I don’t know enough.”

“But you can learn.”

“I know, but that kind of work ought to be done by men.”

“We’ve given men a chance, and they have made the evils.  Whose business is it to protect the children if not the women’s?”

She hesitated a moment, and then said:  “I suppose you’ll laugh at me.”

“No, no,” I promised; then as I looked at her I guessed.  “Are you going to tell me that woman’s place is the home?”

“That is what we think in Castleman County,” she said, smiling in spite of herself.