“I ought to congratulate you on your engagement,” said the gardener. “In fact—Mrs. Rust being out of earshot—I do.”
“Thank you,” said Courtesy, looking wonderfully pretty. “I wish everybody in the world was as happy as I am, though of course marriage is an awful risk. How’s your young woman, gardener?”
“As militant as ever,” said the gardener. “I’m expecting a letter from her any day, or a telegram any minute.”
“Why, is she coming down here?”
“Probably,” said the gardener. He had absolutely no grounds for his confidence except the ground of youth, and that, of course, is only a quicksand.
But the funny thing was she came.
For she cried all her current stock of militancy away on Thursday night, and by three o’clock on Good Friday afternoon she was on the door-step of 21 Penny Street.
“Even if slavery and polygamy become the fashion,” she argued characteristically, “Scottie Brown will still be wrongfully detained in quarantine.”
It was not to Scottie Brown that her thoughts turned when the maid told her that Mr. Gardener had gone to the country for Easter.
“But I must see him,” said the suffragette, who was a little drunk with the bitter beverage of tears.