The fat man followed his glance, and his disgusted expression gave way to a friendly gleam. His puffy eyelids quivered.
"Let us grumble," he said. "You see how the weather behaves to us when we escape for a week-end from bondage. There isn't a bright spot anywhere but one tale I heard lately in my division."
The lank man tossed away his match; the cigar was drawing.
"And what was that?" he said.
"Well, it seems they got a Cabinet Minister down to rant against me," said the fat man, chuckling. "He had made himself particularly obnoxious to our militant sisters, and there were terrible hints as to what the ladies were going to do about him. So a London paper commissioned their blandest reporter to call on 'em, and incidentally get at their intentions;—and he stuck a flower in his buttonhole and tackled an engaging young suffragette, who confided in him the tremendous secret. Swore him, of course, to silence——"
"And the wretch betrayed her?"
The politician grinned.
"They were going to disguise themselves as men," he explained, "and pervade the meeting in the likeness of divers of my rival's most prominent supporters. She was to make up as a well-known farmer who happened to have lumbago;—leggin's, and corporation, and side-whiskers gummed on tight."
"Pity she let it out," said Kilgour.
"Aha!" said the other man, "she was artless. Well the news got down to 'em somehow, just in time for the meeting, and they set a bodyguard over anybody who looked suspicious. Couldn't keep out their principal backers, or insult 'em by explaining, and hadn't time to investigate.—And my rival got on his legs.—I'm told they were all more or less in hysterics, each man glaring at his neighbour. And these whiskers looked jolly unnatural in the artificial light. My rival had got as far as to mention his 'right honourable friend who, at great inconvenience'—when that old farmer started to blow his nose. 'Turn her out!' he screeched, and four men seized the astonished old chap, and hoisted him, kicking and bellowing, to the door.... There was a glorious row, I'm told. It practically broke up the meeting."