Mr. Ziegler, speaking without passion or sorrow, added his views about Frinton. He asserted that it was the worst example of stupid waste of opportunities he had ever encountered, even in England. He pointed out that there was no band, no pier, no casino, no shelters--and not even a tree; and that there were no rules to govern the place. He finished by remarking that no German state would tolerate such a pleasure resort. In this judgment he employed an excellent English accent, with a scarcely perceptible thickening of the t's and thinning of the d's. Mr. Ziegler left nothing to be said. Then the conversation sighed and really did expire. It might have survived had not the Spatts had a rule, explained previously to those whom it concerned, against talking shop. Their attachment to this rule was heroic. In the present instance shop was suffragism. The Spatts had developed into supporters of militancy in a very curious way. Mrs. Spatt's sister, a widow, had been mixed up with the Union for years. One day she was fined forty shillings or a week's imprisonment for a political peccadillo involving a hatpin and a policeman. It was useless for her to remind the magistrate that she, like Mrs. Spatt, was the daughter of the celebrated statesman B----, who in the fifties had done so much for Britain. (Lo! The source of that mysterious confidence that always supported Mrs. Spatt!) The magistrate had no historic sense. She went to prison. At least she was on the way thither when Mr. Spatt paid the fine in spite of her. The same night Mr. Spatt wrote to his favourite evening paper to point out the despicable ingratitude of a country which would have imprisoned a daughter of the celebrated B----, and announced that henceforward he would be an active supporter of suffragism, which hitherto had interested him only academically. He was a wealthy man, and his money and his house and his pen were at the service of the Union--but always with discretion. Audrey and Jane Foley had learnt all this privately from Mrs. Spatt on their arrival, after they had told such part of their tale as Jane Foley had deemed suitable, and they had further learnt that suffragism would not be a welcome topic at their table, partly on account of the servants and partly on account of Mr. Ziegler, whose opinions were quite clearly opposed to the movement, but whom they admired for true and rare culture. He was a cousin of German residents in First Avenue and, visiting them often, had been discovered by Mr. Spatt in the afternoon-tea train.