the men. It was the sorriest travesty of similar
scenes in a politer world. To the credit of the loafers about her, they
did not greatly encourage her. She was perhaps overmature for her
_role_. But they ceased to jostle her. They even allowed her to get in
front of them. The tall, rusty woman in the cart was meanwhile telling a
story of personal experience of the operation of some law which shut out
from any share in the benefits of the new Act which regulates the
feeding of school children, the very people most in need of it. For it
appeared that orphans and the children of widows were excluded. The Bill
provided only for children living under their father's roof. If the roof
was kept over them by the shackled hands of the mother, according to the
speaker, they might go hungry.

'No, no,' Miss Levering shook her head, explaining to her maid. 'I don't
doubt the poor soul has had some difficulty, some hard experience, but
she can't be quoting the law correctly.'

Nevertheless, in the halting words of the woman who had suffered, if
only from misapprehension upon so grave a point, there was a rude
eloquence that overbore the lady's incredulity. The crowd hissed such
gross unfairness.

'If women 'ad 'ave made the laws, do you think we'd 'ave 'ad one like
that disgracin' the statue-book? No! And in all sorts o' ways it looks
like the law seems to think a child's got only one parent. I'd like to
tell them gentlemen that makes the laws that (it may be different in
their world, I only speak for my little corner of it)--but in 'Ackney it
looks like when a child's got only one parent, that one is the mother.'

'Sy, let up, old gal! there's some o' them young ones ain't 'ad a show
yet.'

'About time you had a rest, mother!'

'If the mother dies,' she was saying, 'wot 'appens?'

'Let's 'ope she goes to heaven.'

'Wot 'appens to the pore little 'ome w'en the mother dies? Why, the pore
little home is sold up, and the children's scattered among relations, or
sent out so young to work it makes yer 'art ache. But if a man dies--you
see it on every side, _in 'Ackney_--the widow takes in sewin', or goes
out charin', or does other people's washin' as well as 'er own, or she
mykes boxes--_something_ er ruther, any'ow, that makes it possible fur
'er to keep 'er 'ome together. You don't see the mother scatterin' the
little family w'en the only parent the law seems to reconize is dead and
gone. I say----'

'You've a been sayin' it