entertainments, the profits of which were to benefit the society,
which drooped for want of funds. It was her first attempt at
organization on a large scale, and she meant to achieve something
remarkable. She meant to use the cumbrous machine to pick out this,
that, and the other interesting person from the muddle of the world,
and to set them for a week in a pattern which must catch the eyes of
Cabinet Ministers, and the eyes once caught, the old arguments were to
be delivered with unexampled originality. Such was the scheme as a
whole; and in contemplation of it she would become quite flushed and
excited, and have to remind herself of all the details that intervened
between her and success.

The door would open, and Mr. Clacton would come in to search for a
certain leaflet buried beneath a pyramid of leaflets. He was a thin,
sandy-haired man of about thirty-five, spoke with a Cockney accent,
and had about him a frugal look, as if nature had not dealt generously
with him in any way, which, naturally, prevented him from dealing
generously with other people. When he had found his leaflet, and
offered a few jocular hints upon keeping papers in order, the
typewriting would stop abruptly, and Mrs. Seal would burst into the
room with a letter which needed explanation in her hand. This was a
more serious interruption than the other, because she never knew
exactly what she wanted, and half a dozen requests would bolt from
her, no one of which was clearly stated. Dressed in plum-colored
velveteen, with short, gray hair, and a face that seemed permanently
flushed with philanthropic enthusiasm, she was always in a hurry, and
always in some disorder. She wore two crucifixes, which got themselves
entangled in a heavy gold chain upon her breast, and seemed to Mary
expressive of her mental ambiguity. Only her vast enthusiasm and her
worship of Miss Markham, one of the pioneers of the society, kept her