And when Mary insisted upon distributing with her own gloved hands these handbills to every passer-by along the King's Parade, they came within hail of their first quarrel. To be sure, the majority of the recipients thought they were Votes for Women, and didn't look at them, and those who did look at them treated them as of no importance, so it really didn't matter; but poor Philip was made quite miserable—that is, almost miserable, since it was no longer possible for him to achieve that condition—and felt that it was really too bad of her to pull his leg in that way, for he was quite sure that she was the authoress of the plot.
Perhaps it was. Still, the jest was very feeble and harmless, and only modesty in its most exaggerated form could have been wounded by it. Not a soul in Brighthelmstone took the announcement of the Honorable Philip Shelmerdine's arrival and positive reappearance that afternoon at all seriously.
But stay! In our chivalrous desire to excuse the Heroine, perhaps this statement is a little too general. There was one person, and just one person only, in Brighthelmstone who treated the handbill as a thing of consequence.
Mary, distributing her handbills along the King's Parade, assisted by her two companions in guilt and at least four other Olympians who had been specially coöpted for the purpose, while Philip, with his hands
