“Spot white’s turn,” announced one, taking up position at the marking-board. “Plain white and the red both in baulk.” Glancing at the pegs, “Twenty-three plays forty-eight.”
“You’ve got to buck up, Scotter.”
He took careful aim. Sent his ball against the right-hand cushion; it went from this to the top of the table, across to the left, travelled down, and dropped gently into the right-hand lower pocket. Three deducted from his score.
“Don’t know what’s the matter with me,” said Scotter despairingly. “Somehow or other, I can’t do anything right to-day.”
XII—MEANS OF TRANSPORT
The indignation meeting occurred without any of the printed entreaties usually found needful in order to induce the public to arouse. It seems less strange that only ladies attended, for the sex is notoriously beginning to take an interest in public questions.
Mr. Woods, driving one of his own wagonettes, was talking to the two passengers secured at the railway station four miles off and giving them a short autobiography—“Begun to work, I did, afore I were twelve, I did!”—when he caught sight of the gathering and broke off to express amazement; he gave at once an emphatic but scarcely original declaration that if women secured the vote they would not know what to do with it. The passengers differed from this view, and Mr. Woods, anxious to secure their patronage for the return journey, hastened to admit that he had not had the time to study the question thoroughly. A lady detached herself from the group and, holding her tweed cap on her head, ran across.
“Whatever’s amiss, Jane?”
“It’s a missis,” she added, robbed of breath by indignation and hurry. “That Mrs. Jarrett, as she calls herself. She’s been and opened some Tea Gardens.”
“News to me,” he remarked alarmedly.