“Because things don’t. And there would be a great chord of screams. And men running a few yards this way or that, and then back again, yelping, with lighted pipes still in their mouths....” “What ad ugly picture. How cad you see it all so clearly?” “I have been thinking all day—of a friend of mine, who must have seen it. I don’t expect an earthquake is a pretty thing, although there is something beautiful about any curious happening.” “I doad’t agree with you,” said Albert. “There are oadly a few beautiful thigs. Roses ... ad sudsets ... ad love....” “Really, Albert,” protested the suffragette, “what do you know about love?” “Well, if it cobs to that—what do you dow about earthquakes? I cad picture love, easily. A bad, kissing a girl, udder a cocoadut palb....” “Nonsense,” exclaimed the suffragette, bounding so violently in her bed as to cause a serious storm in her soup. “Kissing’s not love. Everything that was ever said or written about kissing, I think, must have been said or written by a man. It’s only another of their tyrannies, to which, for the sake of love, women have had to submit.” “You sowd like a suffragette whed you talk like that,” mocked Albert. “No wonder,” she replied. “I am one.” Albert looked shocked to find himself in the presence of such a monstrosity. He went at once to warn his aunt. And she replied: “It doesn’t matter, Albert dear, she’s only staying a few days, till she is well enough to make other plans.” The suffragette, left to her cooling soup, reviewed her theories and her practice. “What’s the good of being hard?” she asked herself, “if you are not hard enough? Either you are harder than the world and can bruise it, or the world is harder than you and bruises you. There is no point in just having a hard crust. As well be dough.” In the middle of the night there was a loud wail from Albert’s room. The suffragette, whose room adjoined his, was the first on the spot. “I seeb to have a bad paid,” cried Albert, who was always cautious in his statements, “id the heart. It feels like cadcer, I thigk.” “I don’t think so,” said the suffragette. “Perhaps you are only in love.” She went and knocked on Miss Brown’s door. “But I doad’t wadt Ah-Bargaret,” said Albert, as his aunt came in. “I should hate to die lookig at Ah-Bargaret. I ab sure I ab going to die.” “We’ll see that you don’t,” said the suffragette, as she began to rub his side, his poor little ribs, furrowed like a ploughed field. “But you are an invalid yourself,” objected Miss Brown jealously. “You had better go back to bed.” “Doh, she is dot ad idvalid, she’s a suffragette,” whined Albert. “I doad’t wish her to go back to bed.”