Sheaves by E.F. Benson — Read

It was nearly a year since Peggy and her sister had dined with early punctuality one night and set off, with Hugh following in a hansom, to be in time for the rise of a momentous curtain, and once again, at much the same hour -- though Hugh, instead of following, had long ago preceded them -- they were hurrying eastward in Peggy's electric broughham, the one possession, it may be remembered, that she desired other people to consider to be hers. Inside the brougham, too, there was much similarity between the moral atmosphere of those two occasions, for once again Peggy was excited and voluble, and Edith, with far more cause for mental unrest, was outwardly as calm and undisturbed as ever. Soon also, even as had happened some ten or eleven months ago, they got into a _queue_ of interminable length. To-day, however, it extended not to the doors of the Piccadilly Theatre, but to a large portal farther east in Bow Street.

"Yes, the Education Bill," said Peggy, who was clearly talking for no other reason except that the edge of anxiety and excitement is felt less in conversation than in silence, "how interesting and instructive it is to observe the Government all standing in a row and industriously digging their own graves! So unnecessary; as if the Opposition was not quite willing, even desirous or wishful, as Canon Alington would say, to do it for them. Why do clergymen say ‘wishful' and ‘oftentimes'? Is it merely in order to make their lay-brothers chatter with rage? Oh, dear, I saw a poster, with ‘Lohengrin' quite large on it! Edith, I don't think I can bear it; I don't, really!"