That's one reason we don't bother
much with holding drawing-room meetings. The older Suffragists have been
holding drawing-room meetings _for forty years_!' She brought it out to
shouts. 'But we go to the mill gates! That's where we hold our meetings!
We hold them at the pit-brow; we hold them everywhere that men and women
are working and suffering and hoping for a better time.'

With that Miss Ernestine sat down. They applauded her lustily; they
revelled in laughing praise, yielding to a glow that they imagined to be
pure magnanimity.

'Are there any questions?' Miss Claxton, with her eyes still screwed up
to meet the returning sun and the volley of interrogatory, appeared at
the side of the cart. 'Now, one at a time, please. What? I can't hear
when you all talk together. Write it down and hand it to me. Now, you
people who are nearer--what? Very well! Here's a man who wants to know
whether if women had the vote wouldn't it make dissension in the house,
when husband and wife held different views?' She had smiled and nodded,
as though in this question she welcomed an old friend, but instead of
answering it she turned to the opposite side and looked out over the
clamourers on the left. They were engaged for the most part in inquiring
about her matrimonial prospects, and why she had carried that dog-whip.
Something in her face made them fall silent, for it was both
good-humoured and expectant, even intent. 'I'm waiting,' she said, after
a little pause. 'At every meeting we hold there's usually another
question put at the same time as that first one about the quarrels that
will come of husbands and wives holding different opinions. As though
the quarrelsome ones had been waiting for women's suffrage before they
fell out! When the man on my right asks, "Wouldn't they quarrel?"
there's almost always another man on my left who says, "If women were
enfranchised we wouldn't be an inch forrader, because the wife would
vote as her husband told her to. The man's vote would simply be
duplicated, and things would be exactly as they were." Neither objector
seems to see that the one scruple cancels the other. But to the question
put this afternoon, I'll just say this.' She bent forward, and she held
up her hand. 'To the end of time there'll be people who won't rest till
they've found something to quarrel about. And to the end of time
there'll be wives who follow blindly where their husbands lead. And to
the end of time there'll be hu