the lady in black.' The pamphlet-seller turned away
to make change for a new customer.

'Do you mean the mother of the Gracchi?' said Vida, at a venture, and
saw how if she herself hadn't understood the joke the lady with the
literature did. She laughed good-humouredly.

'Yes; that's Mrs. Chisholm.'

'What!' said a decent-looking but dismal sort of shopman just behind,
'is that the mother of those dreadful young women?'

Neither of the two ladies were sufficiently posted in the nefarious
goings on of the 'dreadful' progeny quite to appreciate the bystander's
surprise, but they gazed with renewed interest at the delicate face.

'What can the man mean! She doesn't _look_----' Mrs. Fox-Moore
hesitated.

'No,' Vida helped her out with a laughing whisper; 'I agree she doesn't
_look_ big enough or bad enough or old enough or bold enough to be the
mother of young women renowned for their dreadfulness. But as soon as
she opens her mouth no doubt we'll smell the brimstone. I wish she'd
begin her raging. Why are they waiting?'

'It's only five minutes past,' said the lady with the literature. 'I
think they're waiting for Mr. Lothian Scott. He's ill. But he'll come!'
As though the example of his fidelity to the cause nerved her to more
earnest prosecution of her own modest duty, she called out, 'Leaflets!
Citizenship of Women, by Lothian Scott!'

'Wot do they give ye,' inquired a half-tipsy tramp, 'fur 'awkin' that
rot about?'

She turned away quite unruffled. 'Citizenship of Women, one penny.'

'I hope you _do_ get paid for so disagreeable a job--forgive my saying
so,' said Vida.

'Paid? Oh, no!' she said cheerfully. 'I'm too hard at work all week to
help much. And I can't speak, so I do this. Leaflets! Citizenship----'

'Is that pinched-looking creature at the end,'--Mrs. Fox-Moore detained
the pamphlet-seller to point out a painfully thin, eager little figure
sitting on the ledge of the plinth and looking down with anxious eyes at
the crowd--'is that one of them?'

'Oh, yes. I thought everybody knew _her_. That's Miss Mary O'Brian.'

She spoke the name with an accent of such protecting tenderness that
Vida asked--

'And who is Miss Mary O'Brian?' But the pamphlet-seller had descried a
possible customer, and was gone.

'Mary O'Brian,' said a blear-eyed old man, 'is the one that's just come
out o' quod.'

'Oh, thank you.' Then to her sister Vida whispered, 'What is quod?'

But Mrs. Fox-Moore could only sha