miserably
afraid of a strange home. In fact Audrey now liked Jane much more than
ever, liked her completely--and perhaps admired her rather less, though her
admiration was still intense. And the thought in Audrey's mind was: "Never
will I desert this girl! I'm a militant, too, now, and I shall stick by
her." And she was full of a happiness which she could not understand and
which she did not want to understand.

The next morning all the newspaper posters in Northhampton bore the words:
"Policemen and suffragettes on Joy Wheel," or some variation of these
words. And they bore nothing else. And in all the towns and many of the
villages through which they passed on the way to Colchester, the same
legend greeted their flying eyes. Audrey and Miss Ingate, in the motor-car,
read with great care all the papers. Audrey blushed at the descriptions of
herself, which were flattering. It seemed that the Cabinet Minister's
political meeting had been seriously damaged by the episode, for the reason
that rumours of the performance on the Joy Wheel had impaired the spell of
eloquence and partially emptied the hall. And this was the more
disappointing in that the police had been sure that nothing untoward would
occur. It seemed also that the police were on the track of the criminals.

"Are they!" exclaimed Jane Foley with a beautiful smile.

Then the car approached a city of towers on a hill, and as it passed by the
station, which was in the valley, Miss Ingate demanded a halt. She got out
in the station yard and transferred her belongings to a cab.

"I shall drive home from here," she said. "I've often done it before. After
all, I did play the barrel organ all the way down Regent Street. Surely I
can rest on the barrel organ, can't I, Miss Foley--at my age? ... What a
business I shall have when I _do_ get home, and nobody expecting me!"

And when certain minor arrangements had been made, the car mounted the hill
into Colchester and took the Frinton road, leaving Miss Ingate's fly far
behind.

CHAPTER XXIV

THE SPATTS

The house of the Spatts was large, imposing and variegated. It had
turrets, balconies, and architectural nooks in such quantity that the
unaided individual eye could not embrace it all at once. It overlooked,
from a height, the grounds of the Frinton Sports Club, and a new member of
this club, upon first beholding the residence, had made the immortal
remark: "It wants at least fourteen people to look at it."