Secrets on 26th Street by Elizabeth McDavid Jones Page A

five thousand strong!”
    â€œHow much for a paper?” Susan asked the boy. He was red-faced, and younger than Susan. He looked like he was Helen’s age. His stack of newspapers was almost as big as he was.
    â€œA penny, miss.”
    Susan dug in her pocket for a penny and eagerly scanned the front page for the article on the rally. There, she found it: a photograph at the bottom of the page showing some of the suffragists who would speak at the rally. On one side was an article and on the other side, an editorial.
    Over five thousand women from every state in the Union were expected to show up for the parade down Fifth Avenue to Central Park, the article said. There would be bands, floats, and an automobile procession. Men would also be joining the parade; a drum and fife corps would head their division.
    Then she began to read the editorial, and she grew angrier with every line. The editorial ridiculed the suffragists, calling them home wreckers, dangerous, petty, and other words Susan didn’t know the meaning of. But what really made Susan mad was what the editorial said about women in general:
    That the female mind is inferior to the male mind need not be assumed: that there is something about it essentially different, and that this difference is of a kind and degree that votes for women would constitute a political danger, is, or ought to be, plain to everybody .
    Despite the big words, Susan got the message loud and clear. The writer was claiming that females were not as smart as males. Well, she knew one thing for sure—Russell’s mind was not superior to hers. She always made better marks than he did at school.
    It was Lester Barrow’s attitude all over again: if women vote, terrible things will happen. The editorial writer, Lester, Mum’s boss Mr. Riley—they all seemed afraid of suffrage. Why?
    Susan thought back to the bold suffragist she had heard speaking in Chelsea. She couldn’t remember much of what the suffragist had said, but it didn’t seem like anything people should be afraid of.
    Now Susan’s curiosity was really aroused. She looked again at the picture of the featured speaker for the rally. Alice Paul, the caption said. She looked like an ordinary woman to Susan. What could this woman have to say that stirred everybody up?
    There was one way to find out, and Susan made up her mind right there on the curb that she would do it. She would ask Mr. Delaney for the day off and go to the suffrage rally herself. And she would ask Russell and Helen to go with her.
    At dinner, Susan discovered that the rally was not the only unusual thing happening on Saturday. Mum told the girls she was getting the day off work tomorrow to visit Aunt Blanche. Aunt Blanche was Dad’s elderly aunt who lived on a farm on Long Island. Aunt Blanche was ailing, Mum said, and had asked her to come. “I’ll be leaving on the 6 A.M. for Long Island, and I’m not sure what time I’ll be returning.”
    Susan looked up in surprise. Mum was going to spend fifty cents on train fare to visit a distant relative she didn’t even like? Oh, well , she thought, at least I won’t have to explain to Mum where Helen and I will be tomorrow .
    â€œYou’ll need to watch Lucy for me, Susan,” Mum said. “Bea has to work.”
    â€œBut I can’t!” Susan said. If she had to watch Lucy, she couldn’t go to the rally. “I’ve made plans for the day.”
    â€œThen you’ll have to change them. This is not a request.” Mum’s face was beginning to flush. “We’ve all pitched in and done extra so you could be free to work on your essay in the afternoons. Now when I ask you to care for your sister so that I can have a day to do something I need to do, you balk at it?” Her eyes flashed.
    Susan had lost her appetite for the stewed cabbage on her plate. She asked to be excused, but she wouldn’t look at Mum.
    She was