“No wonder,” she replied. “I am one.”
Albert looked shocked to find himself in the presence of such a monstrosity. He went at once to warn his aunt. And she replied: “It doesn’t matter, Albert dear, she’s only staying a few days, till she is well enough to make other plans.”
The suffragette, left to her cooling soup, reviewed her theories and her practice.
“What’s the good of being hard?” she asked herself, “if you are not hard enough? Either you are harder than the world and can bruise it, or the world is harder than you and bruises you. There is no point in just having a hard crust. As well be dough.”
In the middle of the night there was a loud wail from Albert’s room. The suffragette, whose room adjoined his, was the first on the spot.
“I seeb to have a bad paid,” cried Albert, who was always cautious in his statements, “id the heart. It feels like cadcer, I thigk.”
“I don’t think so,” said the suffragette. “Perhaps you are only in love.”
She went and knocked on Miss Brown’s door.
“But I doad’t wadt Ah-Bargaret,” said Albert, as his aunt came in. “I should hate to die lookig at Ah-Bargaret. I ab sure I ab going to die.”
“We’ll see that you don’t,” said the suffragette, as she began to rub his side, his poor little ribs, furrowed like a ploughed field.