Winding Paths Part 21

"I'll give you a sporting chance to run away."

"I'm not very likely to run away from you, I think."

They had reached the well-lit roads now, and he turned and looked keenly into her face, partly to see if by chance he might recognise her, and partly to get a cleaner idea of her appearance.

"You look to nice to be a suffragette," he said.

"Such rot! Do I look too nice to care whether working women and outcast women are fairly treated or not?"

"That's only the bluff of the movement. What they really want is power and notoriety."

Hal tossed her head.

"You're a positive worm," she told him frankly.

Again his engaging laugh rang out.

"That's a nice thing to say to a man who has brought you all the way from Millington to London, and helped you out of a tight corner."

The white teeth gleamed suddenly.

"I'll qualify it if you like, and call you a cross between a worm and a brick."

"Not good enough. I won't pa.s.s the worm at all. If you don't retract it wholly I shall put you down at the first tram, and let you get back to Bloomsbury on your own."

"I'll retract, if you'll tell me who you are."

"I'll tell you afterwards."

She shook her head.

"Perhaps you are going to Downing Street even now, to plan a crus.h.i.+ng blow to the Cause."

"I am going to Downing Street, but it has nothing to do with the Cause, as you call it."

It was her turn to glance round, but she only saw that he was clean-shaven, and somewhat lined. His grey, quizzical eyes met hers full of humour.

"I wonder who we both are?" he said.

"I can easily tell you who I am, as I'm so comfortably of no account.

My name is Harriet Pritchard, and my friends call me Hal. I live with Brother Dudley, who is an architect; and if the world isn't any the better for me, I hope it is sometimes a little gayer, that's all."

"And are you engaged to the young man whose steering gear went wrong?"

"No; I am not engaged to any one at all."

"Very nearly perhaps?"

"No; not even within sight of it. Being engaged, and always having to go out with the same pal, would bore me to tears."

"I see." There was a note of satisfaction in his voice. In the brighter lights he had observed that the warm ulster clung to a very shapely figure, and covered a pair of fine shoulders, and even if she was not pretty, for he could not be quite sure on the point, she was certainly very attractive, and had a delightfully engaging smile.

"I wonder if there is room for another in the ranks."

Something a little condescending in the way he made the suggestion nettled Hal.

"Aren't you a rather old?" she asked.

Again his ready laugh rang out.

"I'll give frankness for frankness. I am forty-eight."

"Goodness!... and I am twenty-five."

"Is that all? Then allow me to say you are a remarkably clever young woman."

"A good many breadwinners are; they have to be. Some of them are too clever even for Cabinet Ministers," and she chuckled joyfully.

In the darkness, she did not see the quick gleam in his eyes, as he retorted:

"I don't think many Cabinet Ministers have the luck to meet a breadwinner who is as attractive as she is clever."

"And if the did," sarcastically, "I suppose they would drop the notoriety yarn and find time to consider whether the working woman is treated fairly or not. The weakness in her defence at present seems solely that not enough pretty women make up her defenders. Bah! You all ought to have kittens to play with, and nanny goats and woolly lambs."

"I don't know why you include me. What have I done?"

"Well, if you're going to Downing Street?"

"Why shouldn't I be going to a dinner-party?"

She turned and glanced up with a daredevil light in her eyes that delighted him.

"I not only think you a member of Parliament, but, judging by your fatuous air of superiority, I should imagine you are positively a full-blown Cabinet Minister."

He busied himself with his steering wheel, while little chuckles of enjoyment came out of his m.u.f.fler.

"And supposing I were?" he said at last.

"Goodness!... I hope you're not?... " in quick alarm.

"Why do you hope so?"

"Oh, I don't know, except that I've never known a Cabinet Minister in my life, and I never expected, if I met one, to treat him like... like -"

"An old and fatuous lump of superiority!" with a gay laugh. "Well, little woman, you needn't be in the least sorry. I don't know that I've ever enjoyed a motor ride more. When will you come again?"

"_Are_ you a Cabinet Minister?..." she asked helplessly.

"Well, I hope you won't disapprove, for I have to plead guilty to being Sir Edwin Crathie."