an think much about it and keep
sane. That's why I say this one won't be any good to us. She'll never be
able to see anything clearly but that one thing. She'll always be
forgetting the main issue.'

'What do you call the main issue?'

'Why, political power, of course.'

'Oh, wise young Daniel!' she murmured, as Miss Blunt touched the
speaker's sleeve and interjected a word into the middle of a piece of
depressing narrative.

Mrs. Thomas stopped, faltered, and pulled herself up with, 'Well, as I
say, with my own verifications these experiences form a body of
testimony that should stir the conscience of the community. I _myself_
felt'--she glanced at Ernestine--'I felt it was too ghastly to publish,
but it ought to be used. Those who doubted the evidence should examine
it. I went to a lady who is well known to be concerned about public
questions; her husband is a member of Parliament, and a person of
influence. You don't know, perhaps, but she did, that there's a
Parliamentary Commission going to sit here in London in a few weeks for
the purpose of inquiring into certain police regulations which greatly
concern women. Who do you think are invited to serve on that
Commission? Men. All men. Not a woman in England is being consulted. The
husband of the lady I went to see--he was one of the Commissioners. I
said to her, "_You_ ought to be serving on that board." She said, "Oh,
no," but that women like her could influence the men who sat on the
Commission.'

'This is better!' whispered the ever-watchful Ernestine, with a smile.

'So I told her about my ten years' work. I showed her some of my
records--not the worst, the average, sifted and verified. She could
hardly be persuaded to glance at what I had been at so much pains to
collect. You see'--she spoke as though in apology for the lady--'you see
I had no official or recognized position.'

'Hear, hear,' said Ernestine.

'I was simply a woman whose standing in the community was all right, but
I had nothing to recommend me to serious attention. I had nothing but
the courage to look wrong in the face, and the conscience to report it
honestly. When I told her certain things--things that are so stinging a
disgrace that no decent person can hear them unmoved--when I told her of
the degrading discomforts, the cruelties, that are practised against
homeless women even in some of the rate-supported casual wards and the
mixed lodging-houses, that lady said--sitting there in