absolute earnestness. When she found that smiling piteously wouldn't
do, she proceeded, looking more and more like a scared white rabbit, to
tell about the horrible cases of lead-poisoning among the girls in
certain china and earthenware works. All that she had to say was true
and significant enough. But it was no use. They jeered and howled her
down for pure pleasure in her misery. She trembled and lost her thread.
She very nearly cried. Vida wondered that the little chairwoman didn't
fly to the rescue. But Ernestine sat quite unmoved looking in her lap.

'Lamentable exhibition!' said Borrodaile, moving about uneasily.

The odd thing was that Miss Scammell kept on with her prickly task.

'Why don't you make her sit down?' Vida whispered to Miss Blunt.

'Because I've got to see what she's made of.'

'But surely you see! She's awful!'

'Not half so bad as lots of men when they first try. If she weathers
this, she'll be a speaker some day.'

At last, having told her story through the interruptions--told it badly,
brokenly, but to the end--having given proofs that lead-poisoning among
women was on the increase and read out from her poor crumpled, shaking
notes, the statistics of infant and still-birth mortality, the unhappy
new helper sat down.

Miss Blunt leaned over, and whispered, 'That's all right! I was wrong.
This is nearly as bad as Hyde Park,' and with that jumped up to give the
crowd a piece of her mind.

They sniggered, but they quieted down, all but one.

'Yes, you are the gentleman, you there with the polo cap, who doesn't
believe in giving a fair hearing. I would like to ask that man who
thinks himself so superior, _that_ one in the grey cap, whether he is
capable of standing up here on this bench and addressing the crowd.'

'Hear, hear.'

'Yes! Get on the bench. Up with him.'

A slight scrimmage, and an agitated man was observed to be seeking
refuge on the outskirts.

'Bad as Miss Scammell was, she made me rather ashamed of myself,' Vida
confided to Borrodaile.

'Yes,' he said sympathetically, 'it always makes one rather
ashamed--even if it's a man making public failure.'

'Oh, that wasn't what I meant. _She_ at least tried. But I--I feel I'm a
type of all the idle women the world over. Leaving it to the poor and
the ill-equipped to----'

'To keep the world from slipping into chaos?' he inquired genially.

She hadn't heard. Her eyes were fastened on the chairwoman.

'After all, they've