Then there was the camisole that concealed the corset and had to be “pinned” in with safety pins.  The knickerbockers might not seek the aid of braces; but they must be kept up by an elastic band.  Over the camisole, in 1910, came a blouse, pernickety and shiftless about its waist fastening; and finally a hobble skirt, chiefly kept up by safety pins, and so cut below as to hamper free movement of the limbs as much as possible.

Day-boots often had as many as twenty-one buttons—­and, mind you, not sham, buttons, as I used to think, out of swagger; but every button demanded entrance into a practicable button hole.  Or the boots themselves were mere shoes with many buttoned spats drawn over them.  All the boots had high heels and the woman walked so as to put a severe strain on her arched instep in order that she might bring on by degrees “flat foot” for surgical treatment.

Who shall describe the hats of 1910?—­and before and since—­in all but the very poorest women?  They were enormous; and so were the hat-boxes; and they could only be held on to the head by running hatpins through wisps of hair.

I will not portray the evening dresses that it sometimes takes a kindly husband an hour to fasten, with “press-buttons” and hooks and eyes; and poor Vivie had no husband and depended on her suffragette maid because at all costs she mustn’t look dowdy or the woman’s cause might suffer at Mrs. Pethick Lawrence’s receptions.

As to night gear:  of course Vivie being a free agent slept in David’s paijamas.  She had long ago cut the Gordian knots of her be-ribboned, girdled night gowns in favour of the Indian garment.  But can you wonder after this true recital of the simplest forms of a decent woman’s costume in 1909-1910 and even now (a recital drawn from a paper on Woman’s dress delivered by David on one of the last occasions in which he appeared at the Debating Society of the Inner Temple—­and checked by my jury of matrons)—­can you wonder that Vivie took very hardly to giving up a man’s life in the clothes of David Williams?  How she vowed to herself—­fruitlessly, because now she is one of the best-dressed women in town (in a quiet way)—­that she would one day enfranchise women in their costume as in their citizenship?  This will never be done until the modistes of Paris, in some great popular uprising, are strangled and burnt on the Place de la Concorde.

At the 1910 (January) Election, Michael Rossiter had been returned as M.P. for one of the Midland Universities.  His Science had certainly suffered from his suppressed love for Vivie, a passion which secretly tortured him, yet for which he dared ask no respite.  He thought it was about time that real men of Science entered Parliament to check the utter mismanagement of public affairs which had been going on since 1900.  He proposed to himself to make a succession of brilliant speeches (he really was an admirable and fluent lecturer)