Now the suffragette liked to see the young busy with their youth, but because she was a snake she could not bear to say so. Especially in answer to “Very amusing, is it not?”
So she said, “Is it?” and immediately cursed herself for the inhuman remark. Some people’s humanity takes this tardy form of hidden self-reproach after expression, and then it strikes inward, like measles.
“Well, that’s as it may be, yerce, yerce,” said the priest, who was so tolerant that he had no opinions of his own, and had hardly ever been guilty of contradiction. “That is your husband, is it not?” he added, as the gardener extricated himself from the knot of fallen dancers.
The suffragette actually hesitated, and then she said, “Yes,” and narrowly escaped adding, “More or less.”
“A most interesting young man,” said the priest, who, with the keen eye of the saver of souls, had noticed the hesitation.
“Naturally he interests me,” said the suffragette.
“He is so original,” continued the priest. “Even his occupation strikes one as original. A gardener on an ocean liner. The march of science, yerce, yerce. Most quaint. I suppose you also are interested in Nature. I always think the care of flowers is an eminently suitable occupation for ladies.”
“Perhaps,” she admitted. “But I am not a lady. I am a militant suffragette.”
The priest’s smile changed from the saintly to the roguish. “Have you any bombs or hatchets concealed about you?” he asked.
“I wish I had,” she replied. I fully admit that her manners were not her strong point. But the priest persisted. He noted the absence of any answering roguishness, and recorded the fact that she had no sense of humour. True to his plastic nature, however, he said, “Of course I am only too well aware of the justice of many of women’s demands, yerce, yerce. But you, my dear young lady, you are as yet on the threshold of life; it is written plain upon your face that you have not yet come into contact with the realities of life.”