buttons are a new device; the old taps were
taken away--they became too dangerous; these poor people found a way of
turning them to effect."

"You mean they stole the fixings?"

"No; though they used to do that now and then. But this was at the last
strike which happened to come during a drought. One of their leaders
said to them: 'Take all the water you can; drain the city dry, make the
rich give up their baths,--then perhaps they will attend to you.' They
actually had the power; they organized the whole of the working
district, and one night they turned on all the taps, the street
fountains as well. And we, because at last they were taking their full
share, were threatened with a water famine! Yes, if they had those
tenement baths which the last Housing Commission recommended they could
run us dry as their leader proposed,--hold the whole city up to ransom
and dictate terms. As it was even those taps proved dangerous, so we
gave them buttons instead; and of course the death-rate has gone up."

"And now the next strike has come."

"Ah, yes, but this is not such a large one and so, as it isn't reckoned
'dangerous,' the Government doesn't interfere, and no one outside
troubles about the rights of it."

They were moving on the outskirts of a crowd in the center of which a
demonstration of strikers was going on. Gaunt, hungry, apathetic faces
formed the bulk of them; in their midst a man with a big voice talked
heroically of the rights of labor and prophesied victory. They stood to
listen for a while, then moved on. At the corner of a side-street which
they crossed stood a smaller group; a woman, her hat tied round with a
motor-veil, stood waving her arms from an orange-box.

"Who are those?" inquired Max.

"Women Chartists," said Sister Jenifer.

"What are they doing here?"

"They go wherever they can get a hearing."

Max stopped to listen a little satirically; he had never heard a woman
speaking in public before. Presently he turned to his guide and found
that her eye was on him. "Shall we go on?" he said.

"This does not interest you, then?"

"It is a subject about which I know nothing."

"But you came to learn."

"Well,--is that woman telling the truth?"

"No, not exactly."

"Does she know what she is talking about?"

"Not as well as she ought to."

"Then, isn't that sufficient?"

"You have listened to men here whose statements were just as wide of the
mark, and whose proposals were just as use