“Lavender comes to me for instructions. There are some things, Gertrude, that you don’t quite understand. It is now just ten minutes to three.”
The wife shrugged her shoulders over the hopelessness of this eccentric male. For the moment she was intensely irritated, being a woman with a craze for managing everybody and everything, and for striking the dominant note in the community in which she happened to live.
“Well, I think it is abominable——”
“What?”
“Making me look foolish, and keeping these men at work, when I had arranged for them to go to the fête. The whole neighbourhood will be represented. We have made a particular effort to get all the working people——”
Canterton remained genial and undisturbed.
“I think I told you that more than half the men are Radicals.”
“All the more reason for getting into touch with them.”
“Voluntarily, perhaps. The men were needed here.”
“But I had seen Lavender——”