xious not to be late, I was too early.'

'Like a woman!'

'The case before the Suffragists' was just coming on. I heard a noise. I
saw the helmets of two policemen.'

'No, you didn't. They don't wear their helmets in court.'

'They were coming in from the corridor. As I saw them, I said to myself,
"What sort of crime shall I have to sit and hear about? Is this a
burglar being brought along between the two big policemen, or will it be
a murderer? What sort of felon is to stand in the dock before the
people, whose crime is, they ask for the vote?" But try as I would, I
couldn't see the prisoner. My heart misgave me. Is it some poor woman, I
wondered?'

A tipsy tramp, with his battered bowler over one eye, wheezed out,
'Drunk again!' with an accent of weary philosophy. 'Syme old tyle.'

'Then the policemen got nearer, and I saw'--she waited an instant--'a
little thin, half-starved boy. What do you think he was charged with?'

'Travellin' first with a third-class ticket.' A boy offered a page out
of personal history.

'Stealing. What had he been stealing, that small criminal? _Milk._ It
seemed to me, as I sat there looking on, that the men who had had the
affairs of the world in their hands from the beginning, and who've made
so poor a business of it----'

'Oh, pore devils! give 'em a rest!'

'Who've made so bad a business of it as to have the poor and the
unemployed in the condition they're in to-day, whose only remedy for a
starving child is to hale him off to the police court, because he had
managed to get a little milk, well, I did wonder that the men refuse to
be helped with a problem they've so notoriously failed at. I began to
say to myself, "Isn't it time the women lent a hand?"'

'Doin' pretty well fur a dumb lady!'

'Would you have women magistrates?'

She was stumped by the suddenness of the query.

'Haw! haw! Magistrates and judges! _Women!_'

'Let 'em prove first they're able to----'

It was more than the shabby art-student could stand.

'The schools are full of them!' he shouted. 'Where's their Michael
Angelo? They study music by thousands: where's their Beethoven? Where's
their Plato? Where's the woman Shakespeare?'

'Where's their Harry Lauder?'

At last a name that stirred the general enthusiasm.

'Who is Harry Lauder?' Jean asked her aunt.

Lady John shook her head.

'Yes, wot 'ave women ever _done_?'

The speaker had clenched her hands, but she was not going to lose her
prese