Jenny was glad to escape very soon after tea, and told her friend a second visit to Mecklenburg Square was not to be done.
"I used to think they was nice houses when I passed by the other side in that green 'bus going to Covent Garden, but I think they're _very_ stuffy, and what wall-paper! More like blotting-paper."
However, one Saturday evening in August, as Jenny was leaving the theater, Lilli begged her to come and hear Miss Ragstead speak on the general aims of the movement, with particular attention to a proposed demonstration on the occasion of the re-opening of Parliament.
"When's the old crow going to speak?" Jenny inquired.
So, because there was nothing else to do and because nowadays Sunday was a long grim moping, a procession of pretty hours irrevocable, Jenny promised to accompany her friend.
It was a wet evening, and Bloomsbury seemed the wettest place in London as the two girls turned into the sparse lamplight of Mecklenburg Square and hurried along under the dank, fast-fading planes and elms. Inside the house, however, there was an air of energetic jollity owing to the arrival of several girl students from Oxford and Cambridge, who stumped in and out of the rooms, greeting each other with tales of Swiss mountains and comparisons of industry. In their strong, low-heeled boots they stumped about consumed by holiday sunshine and the acquisition of facts. With friendly smiles and fresh complexions, they talked enthusiastically to several young men, whose Adam's apples raced up and down their long necks, giving them the appearance of chickens swallowing maize very quickly.
"Talk about funny turns," whispered Jenny.
"They're all very clever," Miss Vergoe apologized, as she steered her intolerant friend past the group.
"Yes, I should say they ought to be clever, too. They _look_ as though they were pecking each other's brains out."
"Why, this is capital," she said. "Miss Ragstead won't be long now. Let me introduce a dear young friend of mine, Miss Worrill."
"How are you?" Miss Worrill asked heartily.
She was a pleasant girl dressed in Harris tweed strongly odorous from the rain. Her hair might have been arranged to set off her features to greater advantage, and it was a pity her complexion was spoilt by a network of tiny purple veins which always attracted the concentration of those who talked to her. Jenny began to count them at once.