e movement. The general atmosphere
of the room was permeated by an odor of damp toast and the stale fumes
of asthma cigarettes.

"What an unnatural smell," murmured Jenny.

"It's those asthma cigarettes," Lilli explained. "One of the members has
got it very bad."

Jenny was glad to escape very soon after tea, and told her friend a
second visit to Mecklenburg Square was not to be done.

"I used to think they was nice houses when I passed by the other side in
that green 'bus going to Covent Garden, but I think they're _very_ stuffy,
and what wall-paper! More like blotting-paper."

However, one Saturday evening in August, as Jenny was leaving the
theater, Lilli begged her to come and hear Miss Ragstead speak on the
general aims of the movement, with particular attention to a proposed
demonstration on the occasion of the re-opening of Parliament.

"When's the old crow going to speak?" Jenny inquired.

"To-morrow evening."

"On a Sunday?"

"Yes."

So, because there was nothing else to do and because nowadays Sunday was
a long grim moping, a procession of pretty hours irrevocable, Jenny
promised to accompany her friend.

It was a wet evening, and Bloomsbury seemed the wettest place in London
as the two girls turned into the sparse lamplight of Mecklenburg Square
and hurried along under the dank, fast-fading planes and elms. Inside
the house, however, there was an air of energetic jollity owing to the
arrival of several girl students from Oxford and Cambridge, who stumped
in and out of the rooms, greeting each other with tales of Swiss
mountains and comparisons of industry. In their strong, low-heeled boots
they stumped about consumed by holiday sunshine and the acquisition of
facts. With friendly smiles and fresh complexions, they talked
enthusiastically to several young men, whose Adam's apples raced up and
down their long necks, giving them the appearance of chickens swallowing
maize very quickly.

"Talk about funny turns," whispered Jenny.

"They're all very clever," Miss Vergoe apologized, as she steered her
intolerant friend past the group.

"Yes, I should say they ought to be clever, too. They _look_ as though
they were pecking each other's brains out."

Miss Bailey encountered them here.

"Why, this is capital," she said. "Miss Ragstead won't be long now. Let
me introduce a dear young friend of mine, Miss Worrill."

"How are you?" Miss Worrill asked heartily.

She was a pleasant girl dressed in