“The next speaker is Mrs. Allen Thatcher,” announced the chairman, beaming inanely as a man always does when it becomes his grateful privilege to present a pretty woman to an audience.  Having known Marian a long time, it was almost too much for my composure to behold her there, beyond question the best-dressed woman in the senate chamber, with a single American Beauty thrust into her coat, and a bewildering rose-trimmed hat crowning her fair head.  A pleasant sight anywhere on earth, this daughter of the Honorable Morton Bassett, sometime senator from Fraser; but her appearance in the legislative hall long dominated by her father confirmed my faith in the ultimate adjustments of the law of compensations.  I had known Marian of old as an expert golfer and the most tireless dancer at Waupegan; but that speech broke all her records.

Great is the emotional appeal of a pretty woman in an unapproachable hat, but greater still the power of the born story-teller!  I knew that Marian visited Elizabeth House frequently and told stories of her own or gave recitations at the Saturday night entertainments; but this was Marian with a difference.  She stated facts and drove them home with anecdotes.  It was a vigorous, breathless performance, and the manufacturers’ attorney confessed afterward that she had given him a good trouncing.  When she concluded (I remember that her white-gloved hand smote the speaker’s desk with a sharp thwack at her last word), I was conscious that the applause was started by a stout, bald gentleman whom I had not noticed before.  I turned to look at the author of this spontaneous outburst and found that it was the Honorable Edward G. Thatcher, whose unfeigned pride in his daughter-in-law was good to see.

When the applause had ceased, Mrs. Owen sighed deeply and ejaculated:  “Well, well!”

As we walked home Aunt Sally grew talkative.  “I used to say it was all in the Book of Job and believed it; but there are some things that Job didn’t know after all.  When I put Marian on the board of trusteees of E-lizabeth House School, it was just to make good feeling in the family, and I didn’t suppose she would attend a meeting; but she’s one of the best women on that job.  And E-lizabeth”—­I loved the way she drawled the name, and repeated it—­“E-lizabeth says they couldn’t do without her.  I guess between ’em those girls will make E-lizabeth House School go right.  That investment will be a dividend payer.  And there’s Morton Bassett, that I never took much stock in, why, he’s settled down to being a decent and useful citizen.  There ain’t a better newspaper in the country than the ‘Courier,’ and that first editorial, up at the top of the page every morning, he writes himself, and it’s got a smack to it—­a kind of pawpaw and persimmon flavor that shows it’s honest.  I guess settling up that Canneries business cost him some money, but things had always come too easy for Morton.  And now that they’ve moved down here, Hallie’s cheered up a good deal, and she shows signs of being cured of the sanatorium habit.”