The suffragette loathed the wording of this remark, but kindly refrained from further criticism. “If you like ...” she said, “I’ll try an experiment on the Brown Borough. I’ll give no meetings and I’ll give no membership cards, but if you leave me time I’ll bring as many women to the Cause as ever did a dozen meetings in Trafalgar Square.”
To hear of other people busy always cheered the Chief M.S.
“You will have done a good work,” she said warmly.
The suffragette went out with those words singing in her head. A thing that very seldom happened to other people’s words in the ears of this self-absorbed young woman.
“To have done a good work ...” she said, on the top of a west-bound ’bus.
“To have done a good work.... But if it were a good work it could never be done. The way of good work goes on for ever. And that’s why I swear I’ll do this work till I die....”
It was fine to feel busy again. The suffragette had always liked to have the measure of her day pressed down and running over, but she had never yet known the luxury of having enough of what she liked. In the home—which is Woman’s Sphere—there is always time to think how little time there is. Even the career of an incendiary, though hectic, often fails to give the illusion of persistent industry. The suffragette was so lost in enthusiasm over the discovery of a good long road under her feet at last, that she presently found herself at Kew.
If you must drift, there are few places better to drift to than Kew Gardens. Only if you go there just when the months have reached the bleak curve of the hill that runs down into spring, you must know where to find the best and most secret snowdrops. The suffragette knew. She was very familiar with the art of being alone in London.
You will perhaps not be surprised to learn that never once in her life had her leisure meant some one else’s pleasure. There had never been any one who would have been in the least interested to know that the suffragette had a few hours unbooked. She never regretted this fact, because she never noticed it. With the exception of Excursion Agents, I should think no one ever knew the holiday resorts around London better than she did. She could enjoy herself very much indeed sitting seriously on grass, watching a world dotted with sentimental cockneyism. It gave her no pang to be one among many twos.
To-day she found the seat that sits forever looking at the place where the snowdrops should be, and only really lives when they come out. And when she got there, it was most annoying, she thought of the gardener, to the exclusion of everything else. After several minutes she found that she had been occupied in committing the address she had been given to memory.