friends and
acquaintances, we prefer to import them from London. As for the
holiday-makers, one sees them, naturally. They appear to lead an
exclusively physical existence."

"My dear," put in Mr. Spatt stiffly. "The residents are no better. The
women play golf all day on that appalling golf course, and then after tea
they go into the town to change their library books. But I do not believe
that they ever read their library books. The mentality of the town is truly
remarkable. However, I am informed that there are many towns like it."

"You bet!" murmured Siegfried Spatt, and then tried, vainly, to suck back
the awful remark whence it had come.

Mr. Ziegler, speaking without passion or sorrow, added his views about
Frinton. He asserted that it was the worst example of stupid waste of
opportunities he had ever encountered, even in England. He pointed out that
there was no band, no pier, no casino, no shelters--and not even a tree;
and that there were no rules to govern the place. He finished by remarking
that no German state would tolerate such a pleasure resort. In this
judgment he employed an excellent English accent, with a scarcely
perceptible thickening of the t's and thinning of the d's.

Mr. Ziegler left nothing to be said.

Then the conversation sighed and really did expire. It might have survived
had not the Spatts had a rule, explained previously to those whom it
concerned, against talking shop. Their attachment to this rule was heroic.
In the present instance shop was suffragism. The Spatts had developed into
supporters of militancy in a very curious way. Mrs. Spatt's sister, a
widow, had been mixed up with the Union for years. One day she was fined
forty shillings or a week's imprisonment for a political peccadillo
involving a hatpin and a policeman. It was useless for her to remind the
magistrate that she, like Mrs. Spatt, was the daughter of the celebrated
statesman B----, who in the fifties had done so much for Britain. (Lo! The
source of that mysterious confidence that always supported Mrs. Spatt!) The
magistrate had no historic sense. She went to prison. At least she was on
the way thither when Mr. Spatt paid the fine in spite of her. The same
night Mr. Spatt wrote to his favourite evening paper to point out the
despicable ingratitude of a country which would have imprisoned a daughter
of the celebrated B----, and announced that henceforward he would be an
active supporter of suffragism, which hithe