“I wouldn’t touch money. I hate the feel of it,” said the gardener abruptly. That threw Mr. Abel into a paroxysm of humour. On the door-step the gardener did a heroic thing. He turned back and found Mr. Abel in the hall, completely recovered from his paroxysm. “What about——” began the gardener, with the suffragette in his mind. “Dangerous to lose sight of her,” he thought. “What about what?” asked Mr. Abel, and was again very much amused by the symmetry of the phrase. He was a bright-mannered man. The gardener’s new pose lay suddenly clear before him. “What about my wife?” he asked. He was rather pleased with the sensation he made. “Your wife?” exclaimed Mr. Rust and Mr. Abel in duet (falsetto and tenor). “What on earth did you do with her last night?” continued Samuel solo. “Can’t she ship as stewardess?” asked the gardener. Poor suffragette! But in the eyes of men one woman is much the same as another. Every woman, I gather, is a potential stewardess. This is woman’s sphere when it takes to the water. The gardener thought he knew all about women. All her virtues he considered that she shared with man, but her vices he looked upon as peculiarly her own. “The boat sails to-morrow,” Mr. Abel observed reproachfully. “The stewardesses have been engaged for weeks.” “Why can’t you leave her behind, what?” asked Mr. Rust. “Women do far too much travelling about nowadays. There’s such a thing as broadening the mind too far, you know. Sometimes, like elastic, it snaps. A lot of women I know have snapped.” “Yes,” said the gardener. “But it would be better for England if I took her away.” This spark nearly put an end to the career of Mr. Abel. He squeezed the gardener’s hand in an agony of appreciation. “I won’t go without her,” said the gardener, rather surprising himself. He gave Mr. Abel no answering smile. He was too busy reproaching himself. “Abel,” implored Mr. Rust. “I simply can’t let old Mrs. Paul go without some one to keep the Red Place in her line of thought. This is obviously the man for the job. My career hangs on you. Be worthy. That is—be a sport, now, what?” “I’ll find your wife a berth,” said Mr. Abel, accompanying each word with a dramatic tap on the gardener’s arm. “The boat is not full.” “Settled,” exclaimed Mr. Samuel, and after that, of course, escape followed. The idea of dinner together hovered between the two as they emerged into the principal street, but as both were penniless, the idea, which originated chiefly in instinct, died. The gardener went to call on the suffragette. He was conscientious in his own way, and fully realised that the woman had a right to know that she was now a wife, and, if not a stewardess, an intending passenger on a boat bound immediately for the uttermost ends of the earth.