Serves you right for asking, she thought, as Florence flicked faster to cover her embarrassment. But Hazel didn’t care, for she had only told the truth.

It wasn’t the Done Thing to mention bodily functions-particularly those of a feminine nature-to anyone.

“No school today, miss?” she asked brightly. Instead she put down her dustpan and began flicking a feather duster at things. It was rotten luck to have been caught red-handed but inevitable, really, given the number of servants in the house and the way they constantly milled around with their dustpans and flyswatters and the stuff they used to clean the carpets when one of the dogs had a mishap.įlorence, however, showed no signs of leaving. It wasn’t a lie, for she had needed something-information. “I needed something,” she said, her face turning very pink. You frightened me half to death.”Īnnoyed, Hazel folded her father’s copy of the Times and put it back on his desk. “Sorry, sir, I’ll-Oh! Miss Hazel, it’s you. She is said to be a person well known in the suffragist movement, to have had a card of a suffragist association upon her, and to have had the so-called “Suffragist Colors” tied round her waist. Whether she intended to commit suicide, or was simply reckless, is hard to surmise. The evidence, however, is strong that her action was deliberate and that it was planned and executed in the supposed interests of the suffragist movement. Some of the spectators close to the woman supposed that she was under the impression that the horses had all gone by and was merely attempting to cross the course. Quickly, in case the door should suddenly open, Hazel read on: Sawyer, the housekeeper, who was a bitter old fright and probably would. Florence was all right, and probably wouldn’t tell. But she knew it would look bad if she was caught. She had never been forbidden, exactly, from entering her father’s study, or from reading the Times. Hazel lowered the newspaper and held her breath. She seems to have run right in front of Anmer, which Herbert Jones was riding for the king. She did not interfere with the race, but she very nearly killed a jockey as well as herself, and she brought down a valuable horse.

The desperate act of a woman who rushed from the rails onto the course as the horses swept round Tattenham Corner, apparently from some mad notion that she could spoil the race, will impress the general public even more, perhaps, than the disqualification of the winner.

Hazel by julie hearn