uld I?" he parried. "I'm only a provincial."

"But surely," pursued the dame, "you knew we'd sent her round the
world. She started on the _Kandahar_, the ship that you stopped
Sir John Pilgrim from taking. She almost atoned for his absence at
Tilbury. Twenty-five reporters, anyway!"

Edward Henry sharply slapped his thigh, which in the Five Towns
signifies: "I shall forget my own name next."

Of course! Isabel Joy was the advertising emissary of the Militant
Suffragette Society, sent forth to hold a public meeting and make
a speech in the principal ports of the world. She had guaranteed to
circuit the globe and to be back in London within a hundred days, to
speak in at least five languages, and to get herself arrested at least
three times _en route_.... Of course! Isabel Joy had possessed a very
fair share of the newspapers on the day before the stone-laying, but
Edward Henry had naturally had too many preoccupations to follow her
exploits. After all, his momentary forgetfulness was rather excusable.

"She's made a superb beginning!" said the resplendent dame, taking
the telegram from Edward Henry and inducting it into another row. "And
before three months are out she'll be the talk of the entire earth.
You'll see!"

"Is everybody a suffragette here?" asked Edward Henry, simply, as his
eyes witnessed the satisfaction spread by the voyaging telegram....

"Practically," said the dame. "These things always go hand in hand,"
she added in a deep tone.

"What things?" the provincial demanded.

But just then the curtain rose on the second act.

IV

"Won't you cam up to Miss April's dressing-room?" said Mr. Harrier,
who in the midst of the fulminating applause after the second act
seemed to be inexplicably standing over him, having appeared in an
instant out of nowhere like a genie.

The fact was that Edward Henry had been gently and innocently dozing.
It was in part the deep obscurity of the auditorium, in part his own
physical fatigue, and in part the secret nature of poetry that had
been responsible for this restful slumber. He had remained awake
without difficulty during the first portion of the act, in which Elsie
April--the orient pearl--had had a long scene of emotion and tears,
played, as Edward Henry thought, magnificently in spite of its
inherent ridiculousness; but later, when gentle Haidee had vanished
away and the fateful troubadour-messenger had begun to resume
her announcements of "The woman a