Lady Alicia was a thin woman, with an excitable temperament, to judge from her restless mouth and eyes, which were never still for a moment.  She was very fashionably dressed and held a lace parasol.  The crowd scarcely recognized her, which annoyed her, for in her own estimation she was an important member of the Women’s Committee which looked after the land girls.  The war had done a great deal for Lady Alicia.  It had dragged her from a sofa, where she was rapidly becoming a neurasthenic invalid, and had gradually drilled her into something like a working day.  She lived in a flurry of committees; but as committees must exist, and Lady Alicias must apparently be on them; she had found a sort of vocation, and with the help of other persons of more weight she had not done badly.

She did not quite understand how it was that she found herself in Miss Henderson’s wagon.  The committee had refused to have a wagon of its own, and the good-natured vicar had arranged it for her.  She did not herself much like Miss Henderson.  Her husband had sent her to call upon the new tenants, and she had been much puzzled.  They were ladies, she supposed.  They spoke quite nicely, and Miss Henderson seemed to be the daughter of a clergyman.  But she was afraid they were dreadful Socialists!  She had talked to Miss Henderson about the awful—­the wicked—­wages that the Brookshire board had just fixed for the labourer.

“My husband says they’ll simply crush the life out of farming.  We shall all be ruined, and where will the labourer be then?”

And Miss Henderson had looked quite unpleasant.  It was high time, she said, that the labourer should have enough to live on—­decently; really thrown the word at you.  And Colonel Shepherd had told his wife that he understood from Hastings Miss Henderson had raised her wages before the award of the Wages Board.  Well, he only hoped the young woman had got some money behind her, otherwise she would be finding herself in Queer Street and he would be whistling for his rent.

The wagons drew up in the centre of the market-place, and the band which the cadets had brought with them struck up “God Save the King.”  Lady Alicia rose at once and nudged her little boy, whom she had brought with her, to take off his cap.  She looked approvingly over the crowd, which was growing denser and denser every moment.  It was so that she really enjoyed the populace—­at a safe distance—­and ready to lend itself to the blandishments of its natural leaders.  Where was her husband, Colonel Shepherd?  Of course they would want him to speak at some time in the proceedings.  But she looked for him in vain.