Affinities and Other Stories

stirring her tea. Daphne is my English cousin, and misna

next day the papers said it had rained blood in Tooting and that quantities of people had gone to the churche

n we were directly over the Tower he grew excited and threw out sand. He said he wasn't going to hang his balloon on the Hou

unpleasant about that, too. It was really mountain sickness, although, of course, there wasn't

nce with the Cabinet. She showed me a lot of photographs of herself in the dock and in jail, put up in a frame that was made to represent a barred window. It was Violet Harcourt-Standish, you remember, who broke up th

, when we dressed in our best gowns and went to a reception for the Cabinet, or something of the kind, Daphne stood on the stairs and began to make a speech. It turned out that she hadn't been invited at all and they put her out immediately-politely, but firmly. I s

ned entirely over, "but I think you came

y lips stiff with fright. He bowed at that and passed on, but not

I was ill and would not wait for my brougham, and to call a cab. I was perfectly numb with rage when I got to Daphne's apartment, and burst in like a whirlwind. But

tent of respectability, and that it had been a coup; that Mrs. Langley, of the Woman's Liberty League, had hired as a maid for the reception and had never got her foot out of the dressing-room

rnal at school and the girls were mad over them. But they were love stories, and this one deals with English politics

d taxes, shouldn't I vote? And hadn't I as much intelligence as the cab drivers and street sweepers? And why couldn't I will my money to my children if I ever had any?-children, not money. Of course, as Father pointed out afterward, I should have been using my a

oon ascension and to plan something new. But the actual conspiracy that

o the mirror to put on her veil, and some

"We don't seem to get anywhere. We

ibly," Poppy sa

ed a disturbance when Royalty was laying a cornerstone and had been jailed for it. (They put her to making bags and she sew

e Hall became too strong for me, how I used to ride over to Ivry and have hysterics in the Tudor Room? And how once I wept on your Louis-Seize

ize divan in earlier days, she was cheerfu

olly! That is English; I am frightfully Engl

led. It isn't especially feminine

e is empty, the other in Canada"-vague, but rhetorical-"I have forgotten them both." There was nothing ambiguous about that. "I rec

ere was a sudden hushed silence in the room; then Lady Jane Willoughby, who had been tying her motor veil, took it off and folded it in her lap

und. "The house is still furnished, isn't i

ll it, one could enter any one of the doors by merely

h tea-cake. Then I noticed Lady Willoughby. In all that militant body, whatever adventure

fford objected to the word "radical," and she substituted "revolutionary." "I should not wi

in, "but if I recall the circumstances I wouldn't lay any

n to," she retorted, "but there is no use asking me to forget what P

s affectionate diminutive. They had started the tea all over again and I rather edged away from Poppy, but Daphne said afterward it was only a matter

s, and mentally during the rest of t

to abduct the

ms that the P. M. had confided to Lord Willoughby that the town was so noisy with Suffragettes that he could not find a quiet spot for a rubber of bridge; that since the balloon incident he slept in his clothes with the windows shut and locked; and that since the lates

as Daphne succinctly put it: "Our Jonah was about to jump voluntarily overboa

as they grew excited I got cold. It be

a on me. And then somebody asked me to stand up and say what I thought. (I have never really spoken in public, but I always second the mot

gainst the oppressor, Man. I believe in the franchise for women, the ballot instead of the ballet. But at home

down. Daphn

ure of speech, you in America have waited a long time for the bath, and i