The Lion's Share by Arnold Bennett
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page 10 of 434 (02%)
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tone, "Oh no! I wasn't arrested. You see, as soon as the row began I just
walked away from the organ and became one of the crowd. I'm all _for_ them, but I wasn't going to be arrested." Miss Ingate's sparkling eyes seemed to say: "Sylvia Pankhurst can be arrested if she likes, and so can Mrs. Despard and Annie Kenney and Jane Foley, or any of them. But the policeman that is clever enough to catch Miss Ingate of Moze does not exist. And the gumption of Miss Ingate of Moze surpasses the united gumption of all the other feminists in England." "Oh no! Oh no! Oh no!" repeated Miss Ingate with mingled complacency, glee, passion, and sardonic tolerance of the whole panorama of worldly existence. "The police were awful, shocking. But I was not arrested." "Well, _I_ was--this morning," said Audrey in a low and poignant voice. Miss Ingate was startled out of her mood of the detached ironic spectator. "What?" she frowned. They heard a servant moving about at the foot of the stairs, and a capped head could be seen through the interstices of the white Chinese balustrade. The study was the only immediate refuge; Miss Ingate advanced right into it, and Audrey pushed the door to. "Father's given me a month's C.B." Miss Ingate, gazing at the girl's face, saw in its quiet and yet savage desperation the possibility that after all she might indeed be surprised by the vagaries of human nature in the village. And her glance became |
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