“I was buying mangoes,” she sobbed stormily, “from a black man with bleached hair. And the whole of a shop-front fell out on him. One brick hit my toe. I looked at the man through a sort of cage of fallen things. It was as if—one had trodden on red currants.”
“What did you do?” panted the gardener. “How fine to live in a world where things happen.”
“I ran away,” said Mrs. Rust shakily. “I didn’t pay for the mangoes.”
“I would rather have had this happen,” said the gardener after a pause, “and have broken my leg, than have had an ordinary day to meet me on Trinity Island.”
After another pause, he added: “But I have lost the suffragette. And that is another matter.”
“Was she killed?” asked Mrs. Rust, steeling herself against the commonplace duty of condolence.
“Certainly not,” replied the gardener. “She is a militant suffragette.”
“Good,” said Mrs. Rust.
“How good the world is,” said the gardener, “to provide such excellent material. The sea, and the earthquake, and a fighting woman to love. Just think—an earthquake—on my first day. I am a man of luck.”
“You have broken your leg,” Mrs. Rust informed him.