t could be made a matter of adjustment. She quoted the
lodger franchise and the latch-key decision.

Vida kept glancing at Borrodaile. As still he made no sign, 'Of course,'
the lady whispered across the back of the bench, 'of course, you think
she's an abomination, but----?' she paused for a handsome disavowal.
Borrodaile looked at the eager face--Vida's, for Miss Blunt's was calm
as a May morning. As he did not instantly speak, 'But you can't deny
she's got extremely good wits.'

He seemed to relent before such persuasiveness. 'She's got a delicious
little face,' he admitted, thinking to say the most.

'Oh, her _face_! That's scarcely the point.'

'It's always the point.'

'It's the principle that's at stake,' Ernestine was saying. 'The most
out-and-out Socialist among us would welcome the enfranchisement of six
duchesses or all the women born with red hair; we don't care on what
plea the entering wedge gets in. But let me tell you there aren't any
people on earth so blind to their own interests as just you working men
when you oppose or when you are indifferent to women's having votes. All
women suffer--but it's the women of your class who suffer most. _Isn't_
it? Don't you men know--why, it's notorious!--that the women of the
working class are worse sweated even than the men?'

'So they are!'

'If you don't believe me, _ask_ them. Here they come.'

It was well contrived--that point! It struck full in the face of the
homeward-streaming women who had just been let out.

'We know, and you men know----' the speaker nailed her advantage, 'that
even the Government that's being forced to become a model employer where
men are concerned, the very _Government_ is responsible for sweating
thousands of women in State employments! We know and you know that in
those work-rooms over yonder these very women have been sitting weighed
down by the rumour of a reduction in their wages already so much below
the men's. They've sat there wondering whether they can risk a strike.
Women--it's notorious,' she flung it out on a wave of passion, 'women
everywhere suffer most from the evils of our social system. Why not?
They've had no hand in it! Our social system is the work of men! Yet we
must work to uphold it! this system that crushes us. We must swell the
budget, we must help to pay the bill! What _fools_ we've all been! What
fools we are if we don't do something!'

'Gettin' up rows and goin' to 'Olloway's no good.'

While sh