"That is just what I told her," said Tim; "but it was no use. She said he was only a common person, and did nothing but fill his head with stuff that would put him above his station—night schools, and debating societies, and Ruskin, and Eugenics, and—and Grape Nuts."
"It seems to me rather a laudable ambition on the part of a common person."
"So I said, but I soon gathered that I had said the wrong thing. It appears that the Citizen has been trying to elevate Miss Jennings's mental outlook, too. He took her to the theatre, and that seems to have put the lid on everything."
"Why? I thought she liked the theatre."
"Yes; but the situation was mishandled. They met by appointment outside a Lyons' tea-shop—Miss Jennings in a dressy blouse and the Citizen in the suit which he only wears as a rule on the anniversary of the capture of the Bastille—and proceeded to a hearty meal of buttered buns. Then, instead of being taken to see Lewis Waller, as she had secretly hoped, Miss Jennings found herself at the Court, listening to a brainy rendering of 'Coriolanus' played by an earnest young repertory company without scenery or orchestra. I gather that they parted outside the emergency exit, and went home in different 'buses."
Philip listened to this highly circumstantial narrative in silence. Finally he said:—
"I'm sorry for Brand. He may not be up to Miss Jennings's standard of gentility, but he is the best man we have, and I intend to make him foreman next week. I bet you he finishes high up in the Company's service."
Tim shook his head.
"We shall see," he said. "Meanwhile, let us go and study the Suffragette in her natural state. I hear the Cause received a tremendous fillip last Sunday. Two policemen were jabbed in the eye with hatpins."
But the Suffragettes were not so conspicuous as they had expected. They did discover a group of intensely respectable and consciously virtuous females haranguing a small and apathetic audience from a lorry, but these had wrecked their chances of patronage from the start by labelling themselves (per banner) "Law-Abiding Suffragists."