. But not too many. That would make
the house noisy and distract her from her work. They would be beautiful
and clever; unless all the laws of heredity were to be set aside for her
especial injury. She would train them, shape them to be the heirs of her
labour, bearing her message to the generations that should follow.

At a corner where the trams and buses stopped she lingered for a while,
watching the fierce struggle; the weak and aged being pushed back time
after time, hardly seeming to even resent it, regarding it as in the
natural order of things. It was so absurd, apart from the injustice, the
brutality of it! The poor, fighting among themselves! She felt as once
when watching a crowd of birds to whom she had thrown a handful of crumbs
in winter time. As if they had not enemies enough: cats, weasels, rats,
hawks, owls, the hunger and the cold. And added to all, they must needs
make the struggle yet harder for one another: pecking at each other's
eyes, joining with one another to attack the fallen. These tired men,
these weary women, pale-faced lads and girls, why did they not organize
among themselves some system that would do away with this daily warfare
of each against all. If only they could be got to grasp the fact that
they were one family, bound together by suffering. Then, and not till
then, would they be able to make their power felt? That would have to
come first: the _Esprit de Corps_ of the Poor.

In the end she would go into Parliament. It would be bound to come soon,
the woman's vote. And after that the opening of all doors would follow.
She would wear her college robes. It would be far more fitting than a
succession of flimsy frocks that would have no meaning in them. What
pity it was that the art of dressing--its relation to life--was not
better understood. What beauty-hating devil had prompted the workers to
discard their characteristic costumes that had been both beautiful and
serviceable for these hateful slop-shop clothes that made them look like
walking scarecrows. Why had the coming of Democracy coincided seemingly
with the spread of ugliness: dull towns, mean streets, paper-strewn
parks, corrugated iron roofs, Christian chapels that would be an insult
to a heathen idol; hideous factories (Why need they be hideous!); chimney-
pot hats, baggy trousers, vulgar advertisements, stupid fashions for
women that spoilt every line of their figure: dinginess, drabness,
monotony everyw