, quite
other than the tone in which he had betrayed where his sympathies, in
spite of himself, really were. Well, well, there were all kinds, even of
people who looked so much alike as policemen.

Now the crowd, with him and Miss Levering as sole exceptions, were
dissolved again in laughter. What had that girl been saying?

'Yes, we're spectres at the Liberal feast; and we're becoming
inconveniently numerous. We've got friends everywhere. Up and down the
country we go organizing----'

''Ow do you go--in a pram?' At which the crowd rocked with delight.

The only person who hadn't heard the sally, you would say, was the
orator. On she went--

'Organizing branches and carrying forward the work of propaganda. You
people in London stroll about with your hands in your pockets and your
hats on the back of your heads, and with never a _notion_ of what's
going on in the world that thinks and works. That's the world that's
making the future. Some of you understand it so little you think all
that we tell you is a joke--just as the governing class used to laugh at
the idea of a Labour Party in conservative England. While those people
were laughing, the Labour men were at work. They talked and wrote; they
lectured, and printed, and distributed, and organized, and one fine day
there was a General Election! To everybody's astonishment, thirty Labour
men were returned to Parliament! Just that same sort of thing is going
on now among women. We have our people at work everywhere. And let me
tell you, the most wonderful part of it all is to discover how little
teaching we have to do. How _ready_ the women are, all over the three
kingdoms.'

'Rot!'

'The women are against it.'

'Read the letters in the papers.'

'Why don't more women come to hear you if they're so in favour?'

'The converted don't need to come. It's you who need to come!' Above
roars of derision: 'You felt that or, of course, you wouldn't be here.
Men are so reasonable! As to the women who write letters to the papers
to say they're against the Suffrage, they are very ignorant, those
ladies, or else it may be they write their foolish letters to please
their menfolk. Some of them, I know, think the end and aim of woman is
to please. I don't blame them; it's the penalty of belonging to the
parasite class. But those women are a poor little handful. They write
letters to prove that they "don't count," and they _prove it_.' She
waved them away with one slim hand. '