“I can set here and laugh at the foreigners,” she remarked.
Erb and Rosalind made Louisa comfortable on a chair, and left her applying herself once more to the intellectual delight of again reading through “The Carman,” with special attention to the paragraph that concerned herself. Just before they went out of sight of her, in going round the circle where bicycles were swishing along, they turned and waved their hands: she unpinned her straw hat and lifted it in a gentlemanly way.
“I wonder,” said Erb thoughtfully, “whether she’s going to make old bones.”
“I shouldn’t let her go again to that work of hers.”
“If anything serious happened,” he said slowly, “I’d make such a stir about the business that they’d have to shut up the factory.”
“That wouldn’t bring her back,” remarked Rosalind.
“Back?” Erb stopped affrighted. “Why you don’t think—you don’t fancy for a moment, do you, that she’s going to—” They walked on quickly for a while. “My goodness,” he cried excitedly, “I’d tear the place down for them! There shouldn’t be a stone left! I’d get questions asked about the business in Parliament! I’d organise meetings. I’d make London get white hot about it! I’d never let ’em rest. I’d set every society at ’em. We’d get up demonstrations in the streets. We’d—”
“Don’t let’s get cross about anything,” said Rosalind. “I want to look back on to-day when I get into my dull moments.”
“You never get dull.”
“I suppose nobody’s life is perfectly happy.”