. To-day I can tell you all about it. A
lorry is a cart or a big van with the top off. But such elegancies are
for the parks. In Battersea, you go into some modest little restaurant,
and you say, "Will you lend me a chair?" This is a surprise for the
Battersea restaurateur.'

'Naturally--poor man!'

'Exactly. He refuses. But he also asks questions. He is amazed. He is
against the franchise for women. "You'll _never_ get the vote!" "Well,
we must have something," says Ernestine. "I'm sure it isn't against your
principles to lend a woman a chair." She lays hands on one. "I never
said you could have one of my----" "But you meant to, didn't you? Isn't
a chair one of the things men have always been ready to offer us? Thank
you. I'll take good care of it and bring it back quite safe." Out
marches Ernestine with the enemy's property. She carries the chair into
the road and plants it in front of the Fire Station. Usually there are
two or three "helpers." Sometimes Ernestine, if you please, carries the
meeting entirely on her own shoulders--those same shoulders being about
so wide. Yes, she's quite a little thing. If there are helpers she sends
them up and down the street sowing a fresh crop of handbills. When
Ernestine is ready to begin she stands up on that chair, in the open
street and, as if she were doing the most natural thing in the world,
she begins ringing that dinner bell. Naturally people stop and stare and
draw nearer. Ernestine tells me that Battersea has got so used now to
the ding-dong and to associating it with "our meeting," that as far off
as they hear it the inhabitants say, "It's the Suffragettes! Come
along!" and from one street and another the people emerge laughing and
running. Of course as soon as there is a little crowd that attracts
more, and so the snowball grows. Sometimes the traffic is impeded. Oh,
it's a much odder world than I had suspected!' For a moment laughter
interrupted the narrative. '"The Salvation Army doesn't _quite_ approve
of us," Ernestine says, "and the Socialists don't love us either! We
always take their audiences away from them--poor things," says
Ernestine, with a sympathetic air. "_You_ do!" I say, because'--Vida
nodded at Lord Borrodaile--'you must know Ernestine is a beguiler.'

'Oh, a beguiler. I didn't suppose----'

'No, it's against the tradition, I know, but it's true. She herself,
however, doesn't seem to realize her beguilingness. "It isn't any one in
particular they