All Roads Lead to Calvary, page 59 by Jerome K. Jerome
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her hand not a single freak had failed her. At the moment, the centre of the room was occupied by a gentleman and two ladies in classical drapery. They were holding hands in an attitude suggestive of a bas-relief. Joan remembered them, having seen them on one or two occasions wandering in the King's Road, Chelsea; still maintaining, as far as the traffic would allow, the bas-relief suggestion; and generally surrounded by a crowd of children, ever hopeful that at the next corner they would stop and do something really interesting. They belonged to a society whose object was to lure the London public by the force of example towards the adoption of the early Greek fashions and the simpler Greek attitudes. A friend of Flossie's had thrown in her lot with them, but could never be induced to abandon her umbrella. They also, as Joan told herself, were reformers. Near to them was a picturesque gentleman with a beard down to his waist whose "stunt"--as Flossie would have termed it--was hygienic clothing; it seemed to contain an undue proportion of fresh air. There were ladies in coats and stand-up collars, and gentlemen with ringlets. More than one of the guests would have been better, though perhaps not happier, for a bath.
"I fancy that's the idea," said Joan. "What will you do if you fail? Go back to China?"
"Yes," he answered. "And take her with me. Poor little girl."
Joan rather resented his tone.
"We are not all alike," she remarked. "Some of us are quite sane."
He looked straight into her eyes. "You are," he said. "I have been reading your articles. They are splendid. I'm going to help."
"How can you?" she said. "I mean, how will you?"
"Shipping is my business," he said. "I'm going to help sailor men. See that they have somewhere decent to go to, and don't get robbed. And then there are the Lascars, poor devils. Nobody ever takes their part."
"How did you come across them?" she asked. "The articles, I mean. Did Flo give them to you?"
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