“I have not worked for twenty-two years among the poor without reaching a certain insight into character; I am not blind to such things, whatever you may be, yerce, yerce. But that is beside the point. I reminded Smith that he might be able to give her less important employment—I was willing to help the girl up to a certain point. I suggested a protégé of my own for the better post, to whom the generous opportunity offered would be far more suitable, a very deserving young man, who is debarred from ordinary employment by the loss of a leg. Mr. Smith accepted my suggestion, and offered Jane Wigsky a post as packer, at seven-and-six a week, a much larger wage than she has been getting lately. She refused, and put the responsibility of her refusal on you. She also mentioned that other girls in the Church Club were under your influence on the question of wages. I made enquiries and found that my sister’s club was in a fair way to turn into a female Trade Union, an abominable anomaly. I took the only course possible. I dismissed all the misguided girls from the Club. There is nothing more to be said.”
“Nothing,” said the suffragette, who had become very white, “except—what must your God be like to have a servant like you?”
“If you are going to blaspheme,” said the priest, “kindly leave my house at once.”
“If God is like that ...” she said, “I pray the Devil may win.”
She ran out of the house childishly, and slammed the door.
The gardener, on Tuesday morning, was parting his hair for the third time, when he received a telegram:
“Don’t come.—Suffragette.”
It startled him, but not very much. He looked at the third attempt at a parting in the glass, and saw that it was an excellent parting for a man on his wedding-day. He reflected that a militant suffragette would naturally tend to become ultra-militant on this final day. And if the worst came to the worst, it could do no harm to go up and find out how bad the worst was. So he went up to London by the eleven train.
He was to meet her at the little bun-shop that clings for protection to the Brown Borough Town Hall. There the suffragette had a fourpenny meal daily, and there they had arranged to have an eightpenny meal together, before assuming the married pose. There was a “wedding-shop” round the corner. I don’t suppose any couple ever made less impressive plans.
And the gardener pursued the plan. He entirely ignored the telegram.