Several times while Mr. Barmby made thus his pudding of the desires of the flesh and the spirit, Skepsey’s tales of Matilda Pridden’s heroism caught his attention.  He liked her deeds; he disliked the position in which the young woman placed herself to perform them; and he said so.  Women are to be women, he said.

Skepsey agreed:  ‘If we could get men to do the work, sir!’

Mr. Barmby was launching forth:  Plenty of men!—­His mouth was blocked by the reflection, that we count the men on our fingers; often are we, as it were, an episcopal thumb surveying scarce that number of followers!  He diverged to censure of the marchings and the street-singing:  the impediment to traffic, the annoyance to a finely musical ear.  He disapproved altogether of Matilda Pridden’s military display, pronouncing her to be, ‘Doubtless a worthy young person.’

‘Her age is twenty-seven,’ said Skepsey, spying at the number of his own.

‘You have known her long?’ Mr. Barmby asked.

’Not long, sir.  She has gone through trouble.  She believes very strongly in the will:—­If I will this, if I will that, and it is the right will, not wickedness, it is done—­as good as done; and force is quite superfluous.  In her sermons, she exhorts to prayer before action.’

‘Preaches?’

‘She moves a large assembly, sir.’

‘It would seem, that England is becoming Americanized!’ exclaimed the Conservative in Mr. Barmby.  Almost he groaned; and his gaze was fish-like in vacancy, on hearing the little man speak of the present intrepid forwardness of the sex to be publicly doing.  It is for men the most indigestible fact of our century:  one that—­by contrast throws an overearthly holiness on our decorous dutiful mothers, who contentedly worked below the surface while men unremittingly attended to their interests above.

Skepsey drew forth a paper-covered shilling-book:  a translation from the French, under a yelling title of savage hate of Old England and cannibal glee at her doom.  Mr. Barmby dropped his eyelashes on it, without comment; nor did he reply to Skepsey’s forlorn remark:  ’We let them think they could do it!’

Behold the downs.  Breakfast is behind them.  Miss Radnor likewise:  if the poor child has a name.  We propose to supply the deficiency.  She does not declare war upon tobacco.  She has a cultured and a beautiful voice.  We abstain from enlargeing on the charms of her person.  She has resources, which representatives of a rival creed would plot to secure.

’Skepsey, you have your quarters at the house of Miss Radnor’s relatives?’ said Mr. Barmby, as they emerged from tunnelled chalk.

‘Mention, that I think of calling in the course of the day.’

A biscuit had been their breakfast without a name.