and understanding, those men.'

'What day was that?'

'This morning.'

'And the Battersea meeting?'

'That's not for another hour; but I have to be there first--to arrange.'

'When do you dine?'

'Oh, I'll get something either before the meeting or after--whenever
there's time.'

'Isn't it a pity not to get your food regularly? Won't you last longer
if you do?'

'Oh, I shall last.' She sat contentedly, hugging her big portfolio.

The lady glanced at the carriage clock. 'In the house where I live,
dinner is a sort of sacred rite. If you are two seconds late you are
disgraced, so I'm afraid I can't----'

'There's the bus I was waiting for!' Ernestine thrust her head out.
'Stop, will you!' she commanded the astonished Henderson. 'Good-bye.'
She nodded, jumped out, shut the door, steadied her hat, and was gone.

It was so an acquaintance began that was destined to make a difference
to more than one life. Those days of the summer that Miss Claxton spent
indoctrinating the women of Wales, and that Mrs. Chisholm utilized in
'organizing Scotland,' were dedicated by Ernestine and her friends to
stirring up London and the various dim and populous worlds of the
suburbs.

Much oftener than even Mrs. Fox-Moore knew, her sister, instead of being
in the houses where she was supposed to be, and doing the things she was
expected to be doing, might have been seen in highly unexpected haunts
prosecuting her acquaintance with cockney crowds, never learning
Ernestine's fearlessness of them, and yet in some way fascinated almost
as much as she was repelled. At first she would sit in a hansom at safe
distance from the turmoil that was usually created by the expounders of
what to the populace was a 'rum new doctrine' invented by Ernestine.
Miss Levering would lean over the apron of the cab hearing only scraps,
till the final, 'Now, all who are in favour of Justice, hold up their
hands.' As the crowd broke and dissolved, the lady in the hansom would
throw open the doors, and standing up in front of the dashboard, she
would hail and carry off the arch-agitator, while the crowd surged
round. Several times this programme had been carried out, when one
afternoon, after seeing the girl and her big leather portfolio safe in
the cab, and the cab safe out of the crowd, Vida heaved a sigh of
relief.

'_There!_ Now tell me, what did you do yesterday?'--meaning, How in the
world did you manage without me to take care of you?

'Yesterda