No, she had escaped these tragedies--yet she was missing. Missing, but now half an hour late. And downtown there were dangerous street-crossings, and dangerous excavations, and reckless motorists.... Once in a while a structural-iron worker dropped a rivet from the seventh story; and there were kidnappers abroad.... The key turned in the lock, and Henry dropped noiselessly into a chair, and caught up day-before-yesterday's paper.
He greeted her tenderly, but temperately. "Well, where've _you_ been?"
She had to catch her breath. "Oh, my _dear_, I've had the most _wonderful_ time! I've--oh, it's been perfectly gorgeous! And I've got it! I've got it!"
He had never seen her keyed to such a pitch, and manlike, he attempted to calm her instead of rising to her own level. "Got what? St. Vitus' dance?"
"_No!_ The scheme! The scheme we were looking for!"
She waved him off. "Just wait 'till I can breathe.... Do you remember what you told me a long time ago about a talk you had with your aunt? And she said bye-and-bye you'd see the writing on the wall?"
"Wait.... And remember your talking to Mr. Mix, when he said you ought to go to a League meeting and air your views?"
She nodded repeatedly. "It was a big public meeting. I was going past Masonic Hall, and I saw the sign. So I went in ... oh, it was so funny. The man at the door stared at me as if I'd been in a bathing suit, or something, and he said to me in a sort of undertaker's voice: 'Are you one of us?' And I said I wasn't, but I was thinking about it, and he said something about the ninety and nine, and gave me a blank to fill out--only I didn't do it: I used it for something _lots_ better: I'll show you in a minute--and then I sat down, and pretty soon Mr. Mix got up to talk,--and you _should_ have seen the way your aunt looked at him; as if he'd been a tin god on wheels--and he bragged about what the League was doing, and how it had already purified the city, but that was only a beginning--and what a lot more it was going to do--oh, it was just _ranting_--but everybody clapped and applauded--only the man next to me said it was politics instead of reform--and then he went on to talk about that ordinance 147, and what it really meant, and how they were going to use it like a bludgeon over the heads of wrong-doers, and all that sickening sort of thing--and the more he talked the more I kept thinking.... My _dear_, all that ordinance says--at least, all they _claim_ it says--is that we can't keep open on Sunday for _profit_, isn't it?"