becoming well known as
an advanced politician. He went further than his party, indeed, and
somewhat offended even his particular _clientele_ by the breadth of his
views. He and Lady Agatha were at this time engaged in the work of
organising labour, especially amongst the girls and women of the
worst-paid and most dangerous trades. It brought them often together
amid forlorn habitations and hopeless humanity. One of the difficulties
was the question of whether the alien women should be brought in. "They
will join the Union and they will go on underselling all the same," said
someone. But Sir Robin was of those who held that the alien should have
equal rights with her English sister, and that it was possible to teach
her to stand on her feet like one of the free-born. He was not chary of
his denunciations of certain methods among the Trade Unions and the
Trade Unionists, and therefore a crowd sometimes howled him down. But
there was always a minority at least to stand by him, and the minority
included the industrious and sober, the honest and thinking, among those
he desired to help.

By-and-by he fell into a quiet friendliness with Mary Gray. He used to
take charge of the ladies when they went into the East End. Lady Agatha
used to say that he was a drag on the wheel, because he would not let
her do imprudent things, because he would veto it when a question of
their going into dangerous streets or houses or rooms, because he
insisted on their leaving by a side door a meeting which was becoming
turbulent, because he was always forbidding some extravagance or other
of her Ladyship's.

"There is one thing about that young man," said Mrs. Morres, who was
chary of praise of her Ladyship's party: "he has excellent common-sense,
and I thank Heaven for it."

"Ah, yes; he has excellent common-sense," Lady Agatha echoed, with a
ruefulness which made Mary laugh suddenly.

"You ought to marry him, my dear," Mrs. Morres went on, looping another
stitch of the endless crochet.

"Marry Bob Drummond!" Lady Agatha repeated. "Marry Bob Drummond! Why, it
is the last thing in the world I should dream of doing."

One evening, just at the end of the season, someone brought the latest
lion to a small reception at Lady Agatha Chenevix's. He was a very
modest and retiring lion, a quiet, very bronzed young man, who wore his
arm in a sling. He had had his shoulder torn in an encounter with an
African leopard. He had fought almost hand to han