They descended to a more particular treatment of the problems ahead. Mrs. Pembrose quoted certain precedents from the Girls’ Club Union.
“The people Lady Harman contemplates—entertaining,” said Mr. Brumley, “are of a slightly more self-respecting type than those young women.”
“It’s largely veneer,” said Mrs. Pembrose....
“Detestable little wretch,” said Mr. Brumley when at last she had departed. He was very uncomfortable. “She’s just the quintessence of all one fears and dreads about these new developments, she’s perfect—in that way—self-confident, arrogant, instinctively aggressive, with a tremendous class contempt. There’s a multitude of such people about who hate the employed classes, who want to see them broken in and subjugated. I suppose that kind of thing is in humanity. Every boy’s school has louts of that kind, who love to torment fags for their own good, who spring upon a chance smut on the face of a little boy to scrub him painfully, who have a kind of lust to dominate under the pretence of improving. I remember——But never mind that now. Keep that woman out of things or your hostels work for the devil.”
“Yes,” said Lady Harman. “Certainly she shall not——. No.”
But there she reckoned without her husband.
“I’ve settled it,” he said to her at dinner two nights later.
“What?”
“Mrs. Pembrose.”
“You’ve not made her——?”