Now
and then she would pause and look into the window of some bookseller
or flower shop, where, at this early hour, the goods were being
arranged, and empty gaps behind the plate glass revealed a state of
undress. Mary felt kindly disposed towards the shopkeepers, and hoped
that they would trick the midday public into purchasing, for at this
hour of the morning she ranged herself entirely on the side of the
shopkeepers and bank clerks, and regarded all who slept late and had
money to spend as her enemy and natural prey. And directly she had
crossed the road at Holborn, her thoughts all came naturally and
regularly to roost upon her work, and she forgot that she was,
properly speaking, an amateur worker, whose services were unpaid, and
could hardly be said to wind the world up for its daily task, since
the world, so far, had shown very little desire to take the boons
which Mary's society for woman's suffrage had offered it.
She was thinking all the way up Southampton Row of notepaper and
foolscap, and how an economy in the use of paper might be effected
(without, of course, hurting Mrs. Seal's feelings), for she was
certain that the great organizers always pounce, to begin with, upon
trifles like these, and build up their triumphant reforms upon a basis
of absolute solidity; and, without acknowledging it for a moment, Mary
Datchet was determined to be a great organizer, and had already doomed
her society to reconstruction of the most radical kind.
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