"Wait till we women get the vote," declared Helen. "Then we'll send Ruth
to the chair."

"Goodness!" ejaculated Jennie. "That sounds terrible, Nell! One might
think you mean the electric chair."

"Is there much difference, after all, between that and the presidential
chair?" Helen demanded, chuckling. "The way some people talk about a
president!"

"We are a loose-talking people," Ruth interrupted gravely, "and I think
you girls talk almost as irresponsibly as anybody I ever heard."

"List to the stern and uncompromising Ruthie," scoffed Jennie. "I am
glad I am going back to Aunt Kate. She is a spinster, I admit; but she
isn't anywhere near as old-maid-like as Ruth Fielding."

"I'll tell Tom about that," said Tom's sister wickedly.

"Spinsters are the balance-wheel of the universe machinery," declared
Ruth, laughing. "I always have admired them. But, joking aside, at this
time when the whole world should be so grateful and so much in earnest
because of the end of a terrible war, trivial matters and trivial talk
somehow seems to jar."

"Not so! Not so!" cried Helen vigorously. "We have been holding in and
trying to keep cheerful with the fear at our hearts that some loved one
would suddenly be taken. It was not lightness of heart that made people
dance and act as though rattled-pated during the war. It was an attempt