But Eve had seen these blouses in the full sunlight, and was candid in her criticism.
“You must stop at the next village, and buy a couple of new blouses!”
“Why, what does it matter?”
Lizzie Straker was in a touchy and argumentative mood.
“They really look too terrible!”
“I don’t care. It is a reflection on those savages.”
“I suppose you don’t want to be too conspicuous when you are out to burn houses!”
This was sound sense, and they halted that day within a mile or two of Horsham and let Eve go on alone to buy two new blouses. The transfiguration was contrived in the corner of a wood, and the egg-stained relics were rolled up and stowed away in their knapsacks.
Apparently they were expected at Horsham, not by the public or the police, but by the elderly gentlewoman at whose front door Joan Gaunt knocked. They were received with enthusiasm by an excitable lady with a high, narrow forehead and prominent teeth. She could talk nearly as fast as Lizzie Straker, and she gave them a most excellent tea.
“I think it is splendid, perfectly splendid, this heroic uprising of the women of England. The Government can’t stop us. How can they stop us? We have got the men stalemated.”