How good it was to get news of them all, how nice and gossipy and gay.

It was almost as though they were here in the room; she seemed to be talking with each one; and as they chatted on and on, the feeling grew in Ethel that each was starting like herself and that some were having no easy time in unfamiliar places.

She could read between the lines.
But the part that struck her most was the contribution of their former history "prof," a little lame woman with snappy black eyes, who had been the leading spirit in their long discussions.

She was an ardent suffragist, and she it was who had brought so many modern books and plays and "movements" into their talk.

Chained to her job in the small town, she had followed voraciously all the news of the seething changing world outside, of the yeast at work in the cities.