"I shall take Gwen," said Lady Dashwood. "She can hand us scissors and pins, and can pick up the bits." She spoke quite boldly and quietly of Gwendolen, and met May's eye without a flicker. "Our plan, May, is to get these young mothers and teach them at least how to make and mend their clothes. It isn't war work. It's 'after the war' work. Those young mothers who have done factory work, know nothing about anything. We must get something into their noddles. Two or three ladies will be there this morning, and we shall get all the work ready for the next club meeting—mothers and babies. Babies are entertained in a separate room. We have tea and one half-hour's reading; the rest of the time gossip. Oh, how they do talk!"
"How much do you expect to get from the Sale of work to-day for your club?" asked May, avoiding the Warden's eye when he put out his hand to her for the cup of coffee that she was passing him.
"Not very much," said Lady Dashwood, "but enough, I hope."
A moment later and Lady Dashwood was opening her letters.
"Mr. Boreham," she remarked suddenly, "is bringing Mrs. Potten in to the Sale. He is the last person I should expect to meet at a Sale of work in aid of a mother's club."
The Warden raised his eyes and apparently addressed the coffee-pot across the table.
"Boreham is usually suspicious of anything that is organised by what he calls 'respectable people.'" Then he looked round at May Dashwood for the first time. The reason why Boreham was going to drive Mrs. Potten in to the Sale of work was obvious both to him and to Lady Dashwood. May did not meet the Warden's eye, though she was tinglingly conscious that they rested on her face.
"I object," she said, imitating Boreham's voice, "not only to the respectable members of the British public, but to the British public in general. I am irritated with and express my animosity to the people around me with frankness and courage. But I have no inimical feelings towards people whom I have never met. Them I respect and love. Their institutions, of which I know nothing, I honour."
The Warden's lips parted with a smile, as if the smile was wrung from him, but May did not smile. She was still making her effort, and was looking down into her plate, her eyebrows very much raised, as if she was contemplating there the portrait of somebody with compassionate interest.
Lady Dashwood saw the Warden's smile, and saw him lean forward to look at the downcast face of May, as if to note every detail of it.