Half an hour later the little cast-iron bell in the steeple of the meeting-house rang. Tom Drake and his wife and John Webb left the farmhouse, and, joining some people from the village, sauntered down the road. Tom was in his shirt-sleeves, for the evening was warm, but Mrs. Drake wore her best black dress with a bright piece of ribbon at the neck, a scarf over her head. Webb carried his coat on his arm and was cooling himself with a palm-leaf fan.
Mostyn was on the lawn watching for Dolly to appear, and was glad that the trio had left her to his care. They were out of sight when Dolly came out of the house, a piece of writing-paper in her hand. Mostyn met her at the gate and opened it for her.
"Well, what luck have you had with your speech?" he asked, as they passed out.
"'What luck,' I say!" She shrugged her shoulders and smiled despondently. "The harder I thought, the fewer ideas seemed to come my way. I give you my word, Mr. Mostyn, I haven't a ghost of an argument. I don't want to vote myself, you see, and I don't see how I am going to make other women want to. Just at present I have so many matters to bother about that I can't throw myself into an imaginary position. I'd break down and cry--I feel exactly like it--if I hadn't been this way before and managed to pull through by the skin of my teeth. You see, standing up before a crowd makes you feel so desperate and hemmed-in- like that you have to fight, and somehow you manage to say something with more or less point to it. If I don't think of something between here and the meeting-house--don't talk, please! I'm awfully nervous. I feel for the world as if I'm going to laugh and cry myself into hysterics. If Warren Wilks were to see me now he'd have the biggest argument for his side he could rake up.
If I was running for office and the returns went against me I suppose I'd lie flat down in the road and kick like a spoilt child."
At this moment a buggy containing two women and a man passed. One of the women, a fat motherly creature, glanced back. "Is that you, Dolly?" she asked.
"Yes; how are you, Mrs. Timmons?"
"I'm as well as common, thanky, Dolly. Drive slower, Joe. What's the use o' hurryin'? They can't do a thing till she gits thar; besides, I want to git at the straight o' this business. Say, Dolly, it ain't true, is it, that you intend to stand up for women goin' to the polls?"