slightly lowered, as if all
their effort were to follow each other as closely as might be; so that
Mary used to figure to herself a straight rabbit-run worn by their
unswerving feet upon the pavement. But she liked to pretend that she was
indistinguishable from the rest, and that when a wet day drove her to
the Underground or omnibus, she gave and took her share of crowd and
wet with clerks and typists and commercial men, and shared with them
the serious business of winding-up the world to tick for another
four-and-twenty hours.

Thus thinking, on the particular morning in question, she made her away
across Lincoln's Inn Fields and up Kingsway, and so through Southampton
Row until she reached her office in Russell Square. Now and then she
would pause and look into the window of some bookseller or flower shop,
where, at this early hour, the goods were being arranged, and empty gaps
behind the plate glass revealed a state of undress. Mary felt kindly
disposed towards the shopkeepers, and hoped that they would trick the
midday public into purchasing, for at this hour of the morning she
ranged herself entirely on the side of the shopkeepers and bank clerks,
and regarded all who slept late and had money to spend as her enemy
and natural prey. And directly she had crossed the road at Holborn, her
thoughts all came naturally and regularly to roost upon her work, and
she forgot that she was, properly speaking, an amateur worker, whose
services were unpaid, and could hardly be said to wind the world up for
its daily task, since the world, so far, had shown very little desire to
take the boons which Mary's society for woman's suffrage had offered it.

She was thinking all the way up Southampton Row of notepaper and
foolscap, and how an economy in the use of paper might be effected
(without, of course, hurting Mrs. Seal's feelings), for she was certain
that the great organizers always pounce, to begin with, upon trifles
like these, and build up their triumphant reforms upon a basis of
absolute solidity; and, without acknowledging it for a moment, Mary
Datchet was determined to be a great organizer, and had already doomed
her society to reconstruction of the most radical kind. Once or twice
lately, it is true, she had started, broad awake, before turning into
Russell Square, and denounced herself rather sharply for being already
in a groove, capable, that is, of thinking the same thoughts every
morning at the same hour, so that t