Mrs. Lloyd-Evans (to Mrs. Ballantyne): How d’ye do. We’re all a little before our time, I think, but then as I always say, it’s better to be too early than too late. (This she says with an air of originality.)
Mrs. Ballantyne: Of course, the minute I got your note I quite saw that something must have happened, or you wouldn’t have asked us to come out in this dreadful cold, and up those awful stairs. I do think, when we’re doing the whole of this Welfare Committee business gratuitously, that they might have found us a room on the ground floor. Isn’t there any hope of getting better premises?
Mrs. Lloyd-Evans: They pretend that any accommodation is difficult to find nowadays, but I should like to know why some building shouldn’t be done? What I always say is, that there wouldn’t be half this unemployment trouble, if people were given work.
Mrs. Ballantyne (bored): Yes, indeed.
Mrs. Lloyd-Evans: It’s just Bolshevism, you know, all this talk of unemployment. There’s always work for those who are willing to work. Now I can’t help thinking it would put a stop to all this labour unrest, if they could only send a few of the leaders to Russia, to show them what Bolshevism has resulted in, there.
Mrs. Ballantyne: Yes, of course. It really would be a lesson. (She is arranging her dress, etc., as she speaks, and tidying herself at a little pocket-mirror.)
Mrs. Akers (seating herself, to Mrs. Lloyd-Evans): Well, I’m all agog to know what’s happened. Your note was most mysterious. What’s been happening at the School? Really, the present generation is the limit—always giving trouble. It seems to have come in with bobbed hair.
Mrs. Lloyd-Evans: Girls are often very artful.
Mrs. Akers: Well, we ought to be able to cope with the artfulness of mere schoolgirls, surely. Now do let’s sit down and get to business.
Mrs. Ballantyne (to Mrs. Lloyd-Evans): As you see, I haven’t brought my daughter. I’m sure it was very thoughtful of you to warn me in your note, but I gather it means that we have something—painful—to discuss?