Honoria acted towards the Suffrage movement somewhat as in older-fashioned days of Second Empire laxity well-to-do people evaded military service under conscription by paying a substitute to take their place in the fighting line.  On account of her husband, and the children she had just had or was going to have, she did not throw herself into the physical struggle; but she still continued out of her brother’s ear-marked money to subsidize the cause.  Rather regretfully, she looked on from a motor, a balcony, a front window or the safe plinth of some huge statue, whilst her comrades, with less to risk physically and socially, matched their strength of will, their trained muscles, their agility, astuteness and feminine charm (seldom without some effect) against the brute force and imperturbability of the Police.

The struggle waxed hot and fierce in the early months of 1910.  Vivie held herself somewhat in the background also, not wishing to strike publicly and effectively until she was sure for what principle she endangered her life and liberty.  Nevertheless she became a resource of rising importance to the Suffrage cause.  She was known to have had a clever barrister cousin who for some reasons best known to himself had of late kept in the background—­ill-health, said some; an unfortunate love affair, said another.  But his pamphlet on the White Slave Traffic on the Continent showed that he was still at work.  Vivie was thought to be fully equal in her knowledge of the law to her cousin, though not allowed to qualify for the Bar.  Case after case was referred to her with the hope that if she could not solve it, she might submit it to her cousin’s judgment.  In this way, excellent legal advice was forthcoming which drove the Home Office officials from one quandary to another.

But Vivie in the spring of 1910, looking back on nearly twelve months of womanly life (save for David’s summer of continental travel) decided that she didn’t like being a woman, so far as Woman was dressed in 1910 and for three or four hundred years previously.

As “David” this had been more or less her costume:  an undershirt (two, in very cold weather), a pair of pants coming down to the ankle, and well-fitting woollen socks on the feet.  A shirt, sometimes in day-time all of one piece with its turn-over collar; at worst with a separate collar and a tie passed through it.  Braces that really braced and held up the nether garment of trousers; a waistcoat buttoning fairly high up (no pneumonia blouse)—­two waistcoats if she liked, or a dandy slip buttoned innocently inside the single vest to suggest the white lie of a second inner vest.  Over the waistcoat a coat or jacket.  On the head a hat which fitted the head in thirty seconds (allowing for David’s shock of hair).  Lace-up or button boots, with perhaps at most six buttons; gloves with one button; spats—­if David wanted to be very dressy—­with three buttons.  On top of all this a warm, easily-fitting overcoat