uffrage
that any of us ever heard.'

'Haw! Haw! Clever ol' fox!'

''E just buttered 'em up! But 'e don't do nothin'.'

'Oh, yes, he did something!'

'What?'

'He gave us advice!' They all laughed together at that in the most
friendly spirit in the world. 'Two nice pieces,' Ernestine held up each
hand very much like a school child rejoicing over slices of cake. 'One
we are taking'--she drew in a hand--'the other we aren't'--she let it
fall. 'He said we must win people to our way of thinking. We're doing
it; at a rate that must astonish, if it doesn't even embarrass him. The
other piece of distinguished advice he gave us was of a more doubtful
character.' Her small hands took it up gingerly. Again she seemed to
weigh it there in the face of the multitude. 'The Prime Minister said we
"must have patience." She threw the worthless counsel into the air and
tossed contempt after it. 'It is man's oldest advice to woman!'

'All our trouble fur nothin'!' groaned an impish boy.

'We see now that patience has been our bane. If it hadn't been for this
same numbing slavish patience we wouldn't be standing before the world
to-day, political outcasts--catalogued with felons and lunatics----'

'And peers!' called a voice.

'We are _done_ with patience!' said Ernestine, hotly; 'and for that
reason there is at last some hope for the women's cause. Now Miss
Scammell will speak to you.'

A strange thing happened when Miss Scammell got up. She seemed to leave
her attractiveness, such as it was, behind when she climbed up on the
bench. Standing mute, on a level with the rest, her head deprecatingly
on one side, she had pleased. Up there on the bench, presuming to teach,
she woke a latent cruelty in the mob. They saw she couldn't take care of
herself, and so they 'went for her'--the very same young men who had got
up and given her a choice of the seats they had been at the pains to
come early to secure. To be sure, when, with a smile, she had sat down
only a quarter of an hour before, in the vacated place of one of them,
the other boy promptly withdrew with his pal. It would have been too
compromising to remain alongside the charmer. But when Miss Scammell
stood up on that same bench, she was assumed to have left the realm of
smiles and meaning looks where she was mistress and at home. She had
ventured out into the open, not only without the sword of pointed
speech--that falls to few--but this young lady had not even the armour
of