“I have been a damn fool,” mourned the suffragette, writhing profanely on her bunk.
“Nonsense,” said Courtesy briskly. “You have been frightfully brave. It was only hard luck that you couldn’t save the woman.”
“But I didn’t try. I had forgotten all about her until this moment.”
“Nonsense,” repeated Courtesy, busy with a hot-water bottle. “You were splendid. We didn’t know you had it in you.”
The suffragette laughed her secret laugh, which she kept hidden beneath her militant exterior. The sort of laughter that flies, not unsuitably, in the very face of tragedy.
“This is a change,” she said.
“What is?”
“To be respected.”
“My dear gal, we all respected you all along. Personally I always told them: ‘Mark my words,’ I said, ‘that gal’s got brains.’”
“Yes, I expect they needed to be told.”