Page:Kangaroo, 1923.pdf/283

 Southern Division, Salisbury, if it will do any good," was the answer.

There was a pause. Somers wrote it down: not in his address book because that was gone.

"And one is treated like this, for nothing," cried Harriet, again in tears. "For nothing, but just because I wasn't born English. Yet one has married an Englishman, and they won't let one live anywhere but in England."

"It is more than that. It is more than the fact that you are not English born," said the officer.

"Then what? What?" she cried.

He refused to answer this time. The police-sergeant looked on with troubled blue eyes.

"Nothing. It's nothing but that, because it can't be," wept Harriet. "It can't be anything else, because we've never done anything else. Just because one wasn't born in England—as if one could help that. And to be persecuted like this, for nothing, for nothing else. And not even openly accused! Not even that." She wiped her tears, half enjoying it now. The police-sergeant looked into the road. One of the louts clumped downstairs and began to look once more among the books.

"That'll do here!" said the officer quietly, to the detective lout. But the detective lout wasn't going to be ordered, and persisted.

"This your sketch-book, Mr Somers?" said the lout.

"No, those are Lady Hermione Rogers' sketches," said Somers, with derision. And the lout stuffed the book back.

"And why don't they let us go away?" cried Harriet. "Why don't they let us go to America? We don't want to be here if we are a nuisance. We want to go right away. Why won't they even let us do that! " She was all tearmarked now.

"They must have their reasons," said the young officer, who was getting more and more uncomfortable. He again tried to hurry up the detective lout. But they were enjoying nosing round among other people's privacies.

"And what'll happen to us if we don't go, if we just stay?" said Harriet, being altogether a female.

"You'd better not try," said the young man, grimly, so utterly confident in the absoluteness of the powers and