And then Joan Gaunt proceeded to make an implacable enemy of her by telling her to see that the beds were properly aired.
About seven o’clock Pulborough discovered that it had been invaded by suffragettes. Three women had stationed themselves with their backs to a wall at a place where three roads met, and one of the women—it was Lizzie Straker—brandished a small flag. Pulborough gathered. The news spread somehow even to the outlying cottages. Stale eggs are to be found even in the country, and a certain number of stale eggs rushed to attend the meeting.
Lizzie Straker was the speaker, and the people of Pulborough appeared to discover something intensely funny in Lizzie Straker. Her enthusiastic and earnest spluttering tickled them. The more she frowned and punched the air with that brown fist of hers, the more amusing they found her. The Executive had not been wise in its choice of an itinerant orator, for Lizzie Straker lost her temper very quickly on such occasions, and growing venomous, began to say scathing things, things that even a Sussex brain can understand.
Some of the younger spirits began to jeer.
“Do you wonder she be’unt married!”
“Can’t she talk! Like a kettle a-boiling over!”
“What’s she wanting a vote for?”
“I’ll tell you for why; to have laws made so as all the pretty girls shall be sent off to Canada.”
Their humour was hardly less crude than Lizzie Straker’s sneering superiority. And then an egg flew, and broke against the wall behind Joan Gaunt’s head. The crowd closed in threateningly. The flag was snatched from Lizzie Straker, and someone threw a dead mouse in Joan Gaunt’s face.
The retreat to the inn was not dignified. The rest of the eggs followed them, but for some reason or other Eve was spared. Her two comrades came in for all the honour. The crowd accompanied them to the inn, and found the blue-eyed landlord standing in the doorway.