Mr Buckham went over to Elsie Vyell and invited her to give the audience an account of what she and her companions had suffered in the dungeon.

“Oh, I couldn’t, no, no, I really couldn’t, Mr Buckham,” she declared, a nervous giggle striving to free itself from a fog of blushes.

“But Lord Buntingdon is particularly anxious that you should tell the story of the mouse,” Mr. Buckham pressed.

Poor Elsie Vyell, torn between the embarrassment of disobliging Lord Buntingdon and of addressing the audience, surrendered and was led to the front of the platform by Mr Buckham.

“I’ve really nothing to say,” she assured the audience, who by an encouraging cheer made her more nervous than ever, so nervous indeed that the convulsive movement she gave seemed the preliminary to a dive from the platform into the middle of the people in the front seats.

“You’re doing splendidly, Miss Vyell,” came the suave voice of the Honorary Treasurer, who was the officer of the Union seated nearest to her. In private life the Treasurer was Mr Fortescue Wilson, affectionately known as Cutie Wilson to the outlying northern suburb in which he practised as a dentist. “Don’t be afraid. Just speak up.”

Now Miss Vyell lived in the same suburb as Mr Wilson and was a patient of his, and she responded mechanically to the quiet confidence of the voice that bade her ‘speak up’ as she had often obeyed the same voice bidding her ‘open, please.’

“Well, now I’m here,” she started off breathlessly, “I may as well tell you what happened to Winifred Gosnay in this horrible place where we were all shut up in the dark. It was a sort of coal-cellar, only there was no coal. I was using shocking language (sympathetic cheers and laughter) and one of the girls told me to shut up and another girl said what of it and she said what I said was what it was. And then there was a most shocking shriek and Winifred Gosnay called out something was walking up the inside of her leg. Well, of course that started all of us off shrieking and Winifred got a bit annoyed because it wasn’t walking up us and then she screamed again because it was biting her, and when we struck a match we couldn’t see anything and then the clergyman came with a lantern and let us out and just as he came in Winifred screamed again and a mouse jumped out of her shorts.”

The feminine part of the audience, which was quite half of it, emitted a loud gasp of horror, and stifled shrieks were heard from different parts of the hall. Miss Vyell was dimly aware that any tale of atrocity she could relate after the mouse would be an anticlimax, but she had no notion how to retire from the platform, and stood there, twisting her handkerchief and heaving helplessly.