The eyes of both women followed the funny little figure. Lynette said as it was absorbed in a crowd of laughing friends:
"Would you prefer that we finished our talk here?" She glanced at the settee in a glass-screened angle near the fireplace, and Rhona assented with evident relief. Her Chiefs of the W.S.S.S., she explained, were anxious that Mrs. Saxham should consent to speak at the Royal Hall Mass Meeting of Protest Against the Delay of Parliament in passing the Woman Suffrage Bill. The Meeting was fixed for the middle of October. Mrs. Saxham's sympathy with the Movement was to be gathered from her writings. A personal expression would be valued by the W.S.S.S.
"I am in sympathy to the extent of joining in any form of protest or any description of organised Demonstration that is not characterised by violence," said Lynette. "To brawl at public meetings"—Rhona wondered whether she had heard of her own baulked attempt to heckle the Bishops at the Guildhall Banquet?—"to assault public personages and damage private or public property is not the method by which the Franchise will be gained. To make war upon men is not the way, I think, to win their suffrages for women. But I will gladly speak at the Meeting, please be kind enough to tell the Chiefs."
"It's awfully sporting of you—when you've been in such trouble. It must have been quite too awful," bungled Rhona, "about your boy!"
"About my boy! ..." Lynette caught her breath and nipped her lower lip between her teeth to keep back the cry that else must have escaped her. "You are kind.... You will be infinitely kinder if you say no more!"
"I beg your pardon. I'm frightfully clumsy!" apologised Rhona. "Roddy—my brother who's at the Front—once told me that I had the tact of a steam-cultivator and the discretion of a runaway motor-bus." She added: "I'm afraid you think I was rough on Brenda. But the Mater's heart-trouble keeps us all on tenterhooks, and for her sake—no matter what horrors are hinted or whispered—nothing shall make me believe—anything but the Best, until the Worst is brought to my door! You understand, don't you? ... What's that? Young Brenda——"
A gust of laughter drew the eyes of both women to the Green Hackle, who, surrounded by an appreciative circle, including Margot and Trixie Wastwood, Cynthia Charterhouse, Doda and Sissi, was performing the maddest pas seul that ever held the floor. One huge golosh flew off, shaving a gilt-and-crystal electrolier as she finished with a daring high kick, and dropped down breathless and panting between Margot and Cynthia Charterhouse.
"You crazy child!" cooed Mrs. Charterhouse, patting one of the pink hands.
"I feel crazy!" gurgled Brenda, while Doda picked up her battered Trouville hat and Sissi retrieved hairpins scattered over the Club carpet. "Oh, my stars! You don't know, you'll none of you ever guess what it is to me to find you all so gay!" She bounced on the springy seat until her red locks tossed like the mane of a Shetland pony. "Now I really can believe—really!—that the whole thing's been a bad dream! Like you get when Sisters have been too busy to boil the potatoes soft, or take the cores out of the stewed apples." She turned her head and the sparkling mask of tiny beads broke out again over her flushed face. "Who are those Soeurs de Charité?" she asked, for the circle of elderly Members had melted away and the two Religious were now going, taking with them the Belgian mother and her children, to whom—of course at the Club's expense—they were to afford a temporary home. "What are they here for? Why, that's the woman who came with us on the boat from Ostend! Ah, my God!—it's all true! I can't tell lies any more! Do you hear, Rhona?" and the bizarre little figure leaped up and stood before them, defiant and panting. "Not even for you and Mother!" The voice broke in a wail. "Oh! how can you bear to see everyone so gay when the Guards and Gunners have been killed at Mons? Seven thousand lying dead, the French Commandant told us. Thousands taken prisoners—and we sit laughing here——"
Lynette Saxham caught the little body as it doubled on itself and dropped like a shot rabbit. She carried it to one of the settees, and knelt by it, loosening the clothes, working with swift and motherly hands.