"You have given her a chance. Let’s hope she makes the most of it. To herd with the—wild she-asses isn’t the way to serve her sex. Rowdiness and shrieking will never get the Vote for Women. Burning down empty country-houses won’t land a female Member in the House of Parliament. It isn’t Propaganda to—behave like an improper goose. Mind you tell her! That you, Saxham?" as a tall figure came towards them out of the glimmering darkness fitfully splashed by the petrol-flares now burnt down and dying out. "Best take your niece home to Harley Street, she is thoroughly tired. Sherbrand and myself and Mr. Burgin here are good for hours yet."
Lynette was dressed in a delicate, filmy black chiffon dinner-gown, and as Saxham’s latch-key clicked in the front door-lock and she rose up out of the tail carved armchair that stood beside the large hall fireplace, her paleness seemed to diffuse light, like the whiteness of the moon.
Her wide bright glance went past the tall wrapped-up figure of Patrine to the taller shape that bulked behind her. No small active boy-form danced in its wake. She put out her arms, groping blindly—swayed and would have fallen, but that Saxham strode past Patrine, caught the slender figure in his powerful embrace, turned and carried his wife away down the short corridor that led to the consulting-room.
"Miss Pat, my dear! There’s cold supper all laid an’ ready waitin’ in the dining-room. By the Doctor’s special orders, and I was to see you eat."
Thus Mrs. Keyse, now for years housekeeper at Harley Street, a little light-haired woman, common of speech and innocent of grammar, but a pearl of price in the Doctor’s estimation and her mistress’s right hand.
"Don’t say they fed you at ’Endon on ’am and salad an’ pigeon-pie. Trash is the word," said Mrs. Keyse, "for resturong pastry, and them there piegeons, if language could be given ’em, would bear me out in what I say."
But Patrine refused baked meats, submitting to be escorted to her room and tenderly fussed over by the kind, Cockney-tongued little woman, and yellow-haired pink-cheeked thirteen-year-old Janey, out of whose small triangular face looked the honest grey eyes of W. Keyse.
Both Mrs. Keyse and Janey had been crying, for Keyse, who acted as the Doctor’s chauffeur, had broken bad news in the kitchen-regions. Master Bawne, according to Keyse, had been taken for a trip in one of them Hairos by a German flying-bloke, and it was feared—not having returned or been heard of—that Something or Other had gone wrong.