Five minutes later Miss Ingate, and the chauffeur also, received a very appreciable shock.  Half an hour later the car, having called at the telegraph office, and also at the aghast lodgings of the waitresses to enable them to reattire and to pack, had quitted Birmingham.

That night they reached Northampton.  At the post office there Jane Foley got a telegram.  And when the three were seated in a corner of the curtained and stuffy dining-room of the small hotel, Jane said, addressing herself specially to Audrey: 

“It won’t be safe for us to return to Paget Gardens to-morrow.  And perhaps not to any of our places in London.”

“That won’t matter,” said Audrey, who was now becoming accustomed to the world of conspiracy and chicane in which Jane Foley carried on her existence with such a deceiving air of the matter-of-fact.  “We’ll go anywhere, won’t we, Winnie?”

And Miss Ingate assented.

“Well,” said Jane Foley.  “I’ve just had a telegram arranging for us to go to Frinton.”

“You don’t mean Frinton-on-Sea?” exclaimed Miss Ingate, suddenly excited.

“It is on the sea,” said Jane.  “We have to go through Colchester.  Do you know it?”

“Do I know it!” repeated Miss Ingate.  “I know everybody in Frinton, except the Germans.  When I’m at home I buy my bacon at Frinton.  Are you going to an hotel there?”

“No,” said Jane.  “To some people named Spatt.”

“There’s nobody that is anybody named Spatt living at Frinton,” said Miss Ingate.

“They haven’t been there long.”

“Oh!” murmured Miss Ingate.  “Of course if that’s it...!  I can’t guarantee what’s happened since I began my pilgrimages.  But I think I shall wriggle off home quietly as soon as we get to Colchester.  This afternoon’s business has been too feverish for me.  When the policeman held up his hand as we came through Ellsworth I thought you were caught.  I shall just go home.”

“I don’t care much about going to Frinton, Jenny,” said Audrey.

Indeed, Moze lay within not many miles of Frinton-on-Sea.

Then Audrey and Miss Ingate observed a phenomenon that was both novel and extremely disturbing.  Tears came into the eyes of Jane Foley.

“Don’t say it, Audrey, don’t say it!” she appealed in a wet voice.  “I shall have to go myself.  And you simply can’t imagine how I hate going all alone into these houses that we’re invited to.  I’d much sooner be in lodgings, as we were last night.  But these homes in quiet places here and there are very useful sometimes.  They all belong to members of the Union, you know; and we have to use them.  But I wish we hadn’t.  I’ve met Mrs. Spatt once.  I didn’t think you’d throw me over just at the worst part.  The Spatts will take all of us and be glad.”

("They won’t take me,” said Miss Ingate under her breath.)