And as the criminals were modestly getting clear, a loud and imperious voice called:
“Hey!”
Audrey, lacking experience, hesitated.
“Hey there!”
They both turned, for the voice would not be denied. It belonged to a man sitting with another man at a table on the outskirts of the group of tables. It was the voice of the rosetted steward, who beckoned in a not unfriendly style.
“Bring us two liqueur brandies, miss,” he cried. “And look slippy, if ye please.”
The sharp tone, so sure of obedience, gave Audrey a queer sensation of being in reality a waitress doomed to tolerate the rough bullying of gentlemen urgently desiring alcohol. And the fierce thought that women—especially restaurant waitresses—must and should possess the Vote surged through her mind more powerfully than ever.
“I’ll never have the chance again,” she muttered to herself. And marched to the counter.
“Two liqueur brandies, please,” she said to the woman in grey, who had left her apron calculations. “That’s all right,” she murmured, as the woman stared a question at her. Then the woman smiled to herself, and poured out the liqueur brandies from a labelled bottle with startling adroitness, and dashed the full glasses on to a brass tray.
As Audrey walked across the gravel carefully balancing the tray, she speculated whether the public eye would notice the shape of her small handbag, which was attached by a safety pin to her dress beneath the apron, and whether her streamers were streaming out far behind her head.