“Number Twenty-one Penny Street. Twenty-one Penny Street.”
I cannot account for the occasional inconsistency of this woman except by reminding you of a certain well-known natural phenomenon. Just as a man whose arm has been amputated may still suffer from a phantom finger-ache, so a woman who has killed her heart must, at certain points in her life, feel the pain of a heart, as if the dead thing turned in its grave. One of the most tragic things about loss is that it is never annihilation.
“This is absurd,” thought the suffragette, pulling herself together. “I must make a plan of campaign, as the M.S. Society would say. How am I going to start?”
Brown Borough popularity is a slippery thing to seize. You must have a handle to grasp it by.
A robin appeared, like a fairy, between two snowdrops. He did not notice the suffragette, nevertheless he looked self-conscious. He re-arranged a perfectly neat feather, and glanced at his waistcoat to see whether its curve was correct. He even tried to glance over his waistcoat at his feet, but this was physically impossible. The suffragette loved him until she realised that he was in love, on which she wearied of him. A chirrup behind her drew her attention to the lady in the case.
“I believe I’ll have to get hold of the priest,” said the suffragette. I have told you that she was devoid of tact. She never took enough notice of the world to sulk when the world was unkind, she was not human enough to quarrel. I have seen her give great offence to the Chief M.S. by borrowing a cigarette in the middle of a tempestuous scene of mutual reproach. She never reviewed the past when arranging for the future, and this, in human relations, is a fatal mistake.
She had an apple and an oatmeal biscuit in her bag. In spite of the robin’s sentimental drawbacks, she shared the biscuit with him and gave him the apple core. He finished the biscuit, and when about three-quarters through with the apple core, he remembered his affair of the heart. With the laboured altruism of the man in love, he tore himself away, and embodied the apple core theme in a little song, by way of informing the lady. She came, she began. Looking up with her third mouthful, she noticed the suffragette. With a hoarse chirp, she shot over the horizon.
“He forgot to warn her,” sighed the suffragette. “Men are so unimaginative.”
The gentleman came back and finished the apple core.
The suffragette’s mind, which was rather sleepy, turned to the occasion when she too had shot away from destiny, over a blue horizon.