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.

butcher was really a very well-meaning human being who would much rather transact his business with her than with her cook. She now confesses that she looks forward to her morning excursion to Third Avenue as one of the most interesting features of her day. Moreover, as she has fewer servants she is compelled to see more of them and to pay more attention to the way they perform their duties. She has incidentally learned that they have feelings of their own and are not the hostile automata that she supposed. Indeed, she now finds that there are no less than nine brothers and cousins of our small family of domestics fighting with the Allies and that two have already been killed. You can't say "Home, James!" with quite the same inflection or with your nose quite so high in the air when James's only brother got a machine-gun bullet through his heart only last week at Poelcappelle. It makes a vast difference, too, when you find the girls in the kitchen ready and eager to roll bandages and knit sweaters. Up to this time the sisterhood of women has always seemed more theoretical than the brotherhood of man. The ordinary lady of fashion has always had her butler and chauffeur standing on guard between her and the world. And now those guards are gone at least ours are.

A year ago I should have been inclined to believe that Helen couldn't have changed, that her attitude toward life would have been as immutable as the ex