“The Ogre, it seems, has come to see that bullying won’t do. He’s given in tremendously. He’s let her have her way with the waitress strike and she’s going to have an allowance of her own and all kinds of things. It’s settled. It’s his mother and that man Charterson talked him over. You know—his mother came to me—as her friend. For advice. Wanted to find out what sort of things we might have been putting in her head. She said so. A curious old thing—vulgar but—wise. I liked her. He’s her darling—and she just knows what he is.... He doesn’t like it but he’s taken his dose. The thought of her going to prison again——! He’s let her do anything rather than that....”
“And she’s gone to him!”
“Naturally,” said Lady Beach-Mandarin with what he felt to be deliberate brutality. Surely she must have understood——
“But the waitress strike—what has it got to do with the waitress strike?”
“She cared—tremendously.”
“Did she?”
“Tremendously. And they all go back and the system of inspection is being altered, and he’s even forgiven Babs Wheeler. It made him ill to do it but he did.”
“And she’s gone back to him.”
“Like Godiva,” said Lady Beach-Mandarin with that sweeping allusiveness that was part of her complicated charm.