The priest was quite obviously a saviour. You could see in his eye that he was succouring the wounded. You could hear in his voice as he addressed the terrified hotel porters who followed him that he was busy rising nobly to an emergency.
“Why, gardener,” said Courtesy, in the tones of one greeting a friend at a garden party. “You here? I was wondering what had become of you. Now what’s the matter with you?”
She poured him out some brandy, as though it were the ordinary thing for a lady to offer to a friend in the street. And the gardener’s world regained its feet, he wondered why he had been so frightened.
“Poor little mites,” said Courtesy to Aitch and Zed. “They won’t forget this in a hurry, will they?”
There is something very comforting in the utterly banal. That is why the instinct is so strong in good women to make you a cup of tea, and poke the fire, when you are crossed in love.
“But if she had been the suffragette ...” thought the gardener. He knew quite well that the thing would not have been so well done, had it been the suffragette. He was fully aware that the operation of having his leg put into improvised splints, and of being lifted upon a door, would have been much more painful, had it been accomplished by the little nervous hands of the suffragette, instead of the large excellent hands of Courtesy.
It is discouraging to those of us who have spent much money on becoming fully efficient in first aid and hygiene and practical economy and all the luxuries of the modern female intellect, to find how perfect imperfection can seem.
“Thank you—you little darling,” said the gardener with his eyes shut, when, after a few spasms of red pain, he was safe upon the door. White-clad hotel porters stood like tombstones at his head and feet.
“Lor’ bless you,” said Courtesy. “Take him to the St. Maurice, porter. It’s the only place left more or less standing, I should think.”
“It is not,” said the priest. “Excuse me, Miss Briggs, there are thousands in this stricken town in need of our help, and I should prefer that only the gentler and worthier of the sufferers should come under that roof. There are many excellent resting-places where our friend here would be far more suitably placed. You ought to know his character by now, and you must think of your own good name.”