“There is a great difference between doing a thing once,” she said, “and making a habit of it. I think I did want to see what it was like, but I never said it was nice, and as for its being Eastern, I am sure I am glad to belong to the West. I always thought it unfeminine, and then I knew it. I did not feel myself again till I had brushed my teeth and rinsed my mouth. Now, dear Millie, I am really interested in the Suffragettes. Their demands are reasonable, and if we are unreasonable about granting them, they must be unreasonable too. For years they have been reasonable and nobody has paid any attention to them. What are they to do but be violent, and call attention to themselves? It is all so well expressed; you cannot fail to be interested.”
“Wilfred would never let me hit a policeman,” said Milly. “And I don’t think I could do it, even if he wanted me to.”
“But it is not the aim of the movement to hit policemen,” said Mrs. Ames. “They are very sorry to have to——”
“They are sorrier afterwards,” said Harry.
Mrs. Ames turned a small, withering eye upon her offspring.
“If you had waited to hear what they had to say instead of running away before the proctor came,” she said, “you might have learnt a little about them, dear. They are not at all sorry afterwards; they go to prison quite cheerfully, in the second division, too, which is terribly uncomfortable. And many of them have been brought up as luxuriously as any of us.”
“I could not go to prison,” said Mrs. Evans faintly, but firmly. “And even if I could, it would be very wrong of me, for I am sure it would injure Wilfred’s practice. People would not like to go to a doctor whose wife had been in prison. She might have caught something. And Elsie would be so ashamed of me.”
Mrs. Ames gave the suppressed kind of sigh which was habitual with her when Lyndhurst complained that the water for his bath was not hot, although aware that the kitchen boiler was being cleaned.
“But you need not go to prison in order to be a Suffragette, dear Millie,” she said. “Prison life is not one of the objects of the movement.”
Mrs. Evans looked timidly apologetic.