Julian, taken unawares, glanced up quickly. His wife's eager, ardent
gaze had fallen upon Miss Marchrose, motionless in her place.
"My dear!" she exclaimed half under her breath, but entirely audibly,
"I forgot you--I forgot you were here. Have I hurt you?"
"Good God!" broke from Fairfax Fuller, and almost at the same instant
Mark Easter, with ingenious clumsiness, sent an empty chair to the
floor.
Sir Julian set his teeth and stood up.
"I am afraid that we have strayed from the subject under discussion.
May I suggest that Mr. Fuller should outline the scheme?"
"Certainly, Sir Julian, by all means--by all means," said the chairman,
looking harassed.
Fuller's scheme anticipated the humanitarian doubts raised by Lady
Rossiter. The Saturday class should be open from two o'clock to four,
and Saturday duty taken weekly in rotation by each one of the three
shorthand teachers belonging to the College. The classes of the week
should be so rearranged as to enable those members of the staff who had
been at work on Saturday afternoon to return to the College at midday
only on Monday morning.
"Excellent," said Mark Easter.
"The Lady Superintendent, who will herself kindly undertake one
Saturday class in three, is of opinion that the proposition is entirely
practicable and would meet with every response from the teachers
concerned."
He turned enquiringly to Miss Marchrose.
"Yes, certainly," she said briefly.
"Then if Miss Marchrose will speak to the two lady teachers, Miss
Farmer and Miss Sandiloe----"
Mark paused.
"Unless anyone else wishes to raise any further point in that
connection," said the chairman, "I may take it that we are all agreed?"
Sir Julian, half against his will, received the odd impression that
everyone was suffering from a strange sensation as of being shattered,
so that scarcely any discussion of the point at issue ensued, and the
remaining business of the day was disposed of between Mark Easter and
Alderman Bellew with unwonted rapidity.
Fairfax Fuller spoke no word, and as soon as the meeting ended left the
room with no slightest pretence at the civility of a valediction.
"Poor old Fuller!" said Mark to Julian, with his tolerant laugh.
"My sympathies are with Mr. Fuller," declared Edna lightly. "He is a
misogynist, poor dear. I know he thinks that women at a meeting are a
mistake; he was looking at poor Miss Marchrose with such an expression
of contempt and fury! However, he carried his point as to the Saturday
classes, and his scheme certainly appealed to one. All the same, I'm
glad I had the courage to utter my little testimony before you all."
Julian refrained from looking at Mark Easter.
"I am thinking of resigning from the committee," he remarked gloomily.
"Like Mr. Fuller, I am a misogynist."