ll obviously self-conscious, occupied with the need
to look completely detached, to advertise: '_I'm_ not one of them! Never
think it!' But it was gradually being borne in upon them that they need
take no further trouble in this connection. Nobody in the crowd noticed
any one except 'those ordinary looking persons,' as Mrs. Fox-Moore
complainingly called them, up there on the plinth--'quite like what one
sees on the tops of omnibuses!' Certainly it was an exercise in
incongruity to compare these quiet, rather depressed looking people with
the vision conjured up by Lord John's 'raving lunatics,' 'worthy of the
straight jacket,' or Paul Filey's 'sexless monstrosities.'

'It's rather like a jest that promised very well at the beginning, only
the teller has forgotten the point. Or else,' Vida added, looking at the
face of one of the women up there--'or else the mistake was in thinking
it a jest at all!' She turned away impatiently and devoted her attention
to such scraps of comment as she could overhear in the crowd--or such,
rather, as she could understand.

'That one--that's just come--yes, in the blue tam-o'-shanter, that's the
one I was tellin' you about,' said a red-haired man, with a cheerful and
rubicund face.

'_Looks_ like she'd be 'andy with her fists, don't she?' contributed a
friend alongside. The boys in front and behind laughed appreciatively.

But the ruddy man said, 'Fists? No. _She's_ the one wot carries the
dog-whip;' and they all craned forward with redoubled interest. It is
sad to be obliged to admit that the two ladies did precisely the same.

While the boys were, in addition, cat-calling and inquiring about the
dog-whip--

'That must be the woman the papers have been full of,' Mrs. Fox-Moore
whispered, staring at the new-comer with horrified eyes.

'Yes, no doubt.' Vida, too, scrutinized her more narrowly.

The wearer of the 'Tam' was certainly more robust-looking than the
others, but even she had the pallor of the worker in the town. She
carried her fine head and shoulders badly, like one who has stooped over
tasks at an age when she should have been running about the fields. She
drew her thick brows together every now and then with an effect of
determination that gave her well-chiselled features so dark and
forbidding an aspect it was a surprise to see the grace that swept into
her face when, at something one of her comrades said, she broke into a
smile. Two shabby men on Vida's left were wor