that of a family hanger-on-the poor relative always ready to use the opera tickets. Well, you should see Cousin Minnie now. She is the local commandant of some organization or other and has her own hangerson-dozens of them. I think she runs something like a hundred diet-kitchens-and all the butchers and grocers tremble at her approach. She has no time to waste on her relatives, for she is one of Hoover's righthand-maidens. She is an authority on cuts, calories, and cubic contents. She is living for the first time and making things hum. I shouldn't be surprised to see her at the head of an Allied Food Commission. Anyhow, I take off my hat to Minnie!

There are thousands of women just like her all over the United States. They are helping the country and helping themselves and each other, too. Starting with the making of surgical dressings in 1915 for the Allies, the work has gradually broadened until there is now hardly anything a woman can't do to helpeven if she wants to become a letter-carrier or a yeoman in the United States navy.

It is all very well to say that it is "the fashion." Fashion might make it easier to start, but nothing less than patriotism would lead the women to keep on.

I thought of these things as I studied Helen's alert face under the flitting lights of the arc-lamps. It seemed to me that she looked ten years younger. It may have been her cap, but I thought she looked pret

tier than I had ever known her to be since we had been married. Speeding through the sleeping city I realized all over again that I was in love with my wife, and I had a curious sensation that I was eloping with her out of an old life into a new.

It was ten minutes to four as we rolled up to the curb at the Pennsylvania Station. No red-capped porters sprang forward to relieve us of our bags; no pompous officials watched our movements with courteous condescension. The brilliantly lighted concourse was empty save for a few bent heads partially visible through the windows of the ticket-offices.

"They must all be down on the platforms already!" exclaimed Helen, hurrying toward the gates. "I hope we're not late!"

The guardian at the head of the steps saluted as his eye caught Helen's cap.

"The train isn't in yet, miss," he remarked encouragingly. "The other ladies are below on the platform."

It began to look like business.

"Guess I'll come with you," I hazarded. "May I?"

"You'll have to ask Miss Pritchett," retorted my wife. "Maybe she'll let you-if she doesn't bite your head off first!"

We made our way down to the lower level and looked about us. At the farther end a group of per

haps thirty women, all in uniform, were standing about some crude plank tables piled high with rolls, sandwiches, and fruit, while on two trucks stood four huge canisters. The tracks were empty of trains, but there was an air of expectancy which indicated that we were none too soon.

"I must get assigned," said Helen, hurrying away. I followed in more leisurely fashion. It was up to me, I recognized, to make some sort of explanation to the female autocrat running this show, and I had, unfortunately, to get her permission to remain there at all. It was not difficult to find her. There was only one woman there who by any possibility could have been Miss Pritchett. She a tall, geometrical woman with strong-minded feet-was standing beside one of the canisters, and her aggressive profile, with its firmly compressed lips, left no doubt in my mind as to her identity.

But they were not all like that. Indeed, between Miss Pritchett and myself I descried a slender Artemis, whose cap was refusing to remain on her chestnut hair, and whose large gray eyes let themselves fall goodnaturedly upon mine as she tried to force the rebellious thing into place. I was glad that I had heard that telephone. Surely we were all comrades-even if not yet in arms. And there were others, a few of whom I knew already. A stout woman with a slight mustache and an unmistakably Italian cast of feature, who

seemed to be quite at home among the bananas, was arranging the fruit-stand. Assisting her was a scholastic angularity in specs, and beyond, dallying with the sandwiches, I perceived two of Margery's friends. The platform was crowded with women of every sort, from awkward young girls to motherly whitehaired old ladies, all with an unmistakable air of purpose. Evidently getting out at four in the morning had not proved such an undertaking to them as I had assumed that it would be for my wife. There were shop-girls, scrub-women, a couple of actresses, and others who had no peculiarly distinguishing characteristics, and among whom-could I be seeing true? an elderly female who strikingly resembled my friend Mrs. Highbilt, in an old travelling suit. Shades of Fifth Avenue! She signalled with a gloveless

hand.

"What are you doing here, you mere man?" she cackled genially.

"Taking lessons from my better half," I admitted. "Honestly, Anna, I think this is about the greatest thing I've seen since I got back!"

She seemed pleased.

"The women are all right!" she said confidently. "All of them!"

At that instant we were interrupted by the Italian lady, and I turned to render my apologies to my nemesis beside the coffee-cans.

"I must ask your pardon," I began, approaching that forbidding personality in considerable embarrassment, "for the way I answered you over the telephone this morning

"Telephone?" she interrupted in a resonant basso profundo. "Telephone! I never spoke to you on the telephone in my life."

"Oh," I exclaimed. "Aren't you Miss Pritchett?" "No," she replied stiffly. "I am not Miss Pritchett! I am Mrs. Judge Wadbone. My husband is one of our Supreme Court justices. That is Miss Pritchett over there!" and she indicated my goddess of the erstwhile rebellious hair. "Thank you for the compliment-just the same!" she added rather humorously.

Any disastrous effect that this thrilling discovery might have had upon my future career was prevented by a heavy rumbling. The train was coming! Instantly the platform became a hive of activity as each woman rushed to her appointed position. The rumbling grew louder, the shriek of the brakes rising high above its diapason. Soon the train shot out of the shadows and ground slowly to a stop beside us. Simultaneously every window was pulled up, revealing one or more sober bronze faces.

"It's the th colored regulars!" a musical voice shouted in my ear. "Mr. Stanton, do you mind handling those coffee-urns?" It was SHE!