ke her head. Even when they heard the
words these strange fellow-citizens used, meaning often failed to
accompany sound.

'Oh, is _that_ Mary?' A rollicking young rough, with his hat on the
extreme back of his head, began to sing, 'Molly Darling.'

''Ow'd yer like the skilly?' another shouted up at the girl.

'Skilly?' whispered Mrs. Fox-Moore.

Vida in turn shook her head. It wasn't in the dictionary of any language
she knew. But it seemed in some way to involve dishonour, for the
chairman, who had been consulting with the man in grey, turned suddenly
and faced the crowd. Her eyes were shining with the light of battle, but
what she said in a peculiarly pleasant voice was--

'Miss O'Brian has come here for the express purpose of telling you how
she liked it.'

'Oh, she's going to tell us all about it. 'Ow _nice_!' But they let the
thin little slip of a girl alone after that.

It was a new-comer, a few moments later who called out from the fringe
of the crowd--

'I say, Mary, w'en yer get yer rights will y' be a perliceman?' Even the
tall, grave guardians of the peace ranged about the monument, even they
smiled at the suggested image.

After all, it might not be so uninteresting to listen to these people
for a few minutes. It wasn't often that life presented such an
opportunity. It probably would never occur again. These women on the
plinth must be not alone of a different world, but of a different clay,
since they not only did not shrink from disgracing themselves--women
had been capable of that before--but these didn't even mind ridicule.
Which was new.

Just then the mother of the Gracchi came to the edge of the plinth to
open the meeting.

'Friends!' she began. The crowd hooted that proposition to start with.
But the pale woman with the candid eyes went on as calmly as though she
had been received with polite applause, telling the jeering crowd
several things they certainly had not known before, that, among other
matters, they were met there to pass a censure on the Government----

'Haw! haw!'

''Ear, 'ear!' said the deaf old newsvendor, with his free hand up to his
ear.

'And to express our sympathy with the brave women----'

The staccato cries throughout the audience dissolved into one general
hoot; but above it sounded the old newsvendor's ''Ear, 'ear!'

''E can't 'ear without 'e shouts about it.'

'Try and keep _yerself_ quiet,' said he, with dignity. 'We ain't 'ere to
'ear _you_.'

'----