“I am paying you two hundred a year,” said Mrs. Rust brutally, “to save me from these vulgar details.”
“Oh, Lor’,” said Courtesy.
“But what about Scottie?” asked the gardener.
“Scottie’s your affair, not mine. I’m not paying you £200 a year to follow me about.”
The gardener is a very difficult person to snub.
“Scottie and I are coming gratis.”
And Mrs. Rust said, “Good.”
But the little boat, with the suffragette on board of her, fled across the Atlantic, as if aware of the projected pursuit of the great mail steamer.
The suffragette, a morose unit on a desert island of her own making, stood separated from the world by a gulf of gossip. She used to sit on the poop, where nobody else would sit, with the wind in her hair and the sun in her eyes, building theories.
There are some people who can never see a little cloud of fantasy float across the horizon of their dreams without building a heavy castle in the air upon it, and bringing it to earth. Whenever the suffragette thought of the gardener, she broke the thought with a theory. It is sad to be burdened with a brain that must always track illusion to disillusionment. She had one consolation, one persistent and glorious contradiction, one shining truth in a welter of self-questioning:—“I’m alone—I’m alone—I’m alone....”