Lady Agatha regarded him speculatively. But admiringly, too.
"But those nurses——" she said. "If you're going to the China Seas you can't very well take Parker's Beach along."
"I was coming to that," said Cleggett, bowing. "I contemplate a hospital ship—a vessel supplied with nurses and lint and medicines, that will accompany the Jasper B., and fly the Red Cross flag."
"But they are frightful people, really, those Chinese pirates, you know," said Lady Agatha. "Do you think they'll quite appreciate a hospital ship?"
"It is my duty," said Cleggett, simply. "Whether they appreciate it or not, a hospital ship they shall have. This is the twentieth century. And although the great spirits of other days had much to commend them, it is not to be denied that they knew little of our modern humanitarianism. It has remained for the twentieth century to develop that. And one owes a duty to one's epoch as well as to one's individuality."
"But," repeated Lady Agatha, with a meditative frown, "they are really FRIGHTFUL people!"
"There is good in all men," said Cleggett, "even in those whom the stern necessities of idealism sentence to death. And I have no doubt that many a Chinese pirate would, under other circumstances, have developed into a very contented and useful laundry-man."
Lady Agatha studied him intently for a moment. "Mr. Cleggett," she said, "if you will permit me to say so, a great suffragist leader was lost when fate made you a man."
"Thank you," said Cleggett, bowing again.
He dispatched George—a person of address as well as a fighter in whom the blood of ancient Greece ran quick and strong—on a humanitarian mission. George was to walk a mile to the trolley line, go to Fairport, hire a taxicab, and make all possible speed into Manhattan. There he was to communicate with a young physician of Cleggett's acquaintance, Dr. Harry Farnsworth.