tion that greeted this, she said with
uplifted hand--

'Stop! Let me tell you about it.'

The action had in it so much of authority that (as it seemed, to their
own surprise) the interrupters, with mouths still open, suspended
operations for a moment.

'Why, this is a woman of education! What on earth is a person like that
doing in this _galere_?' Vida asked, as if Mrs. Fox-Moore might be able
to enlighten her. 'Can't she see--even if there were anything in the
"Cause," as she calls it--what an imbecile waste of time it is talking
to these louts?'

'There's a good many voters here,' said a tall, gloomy-looking
individual, wearing a muffler in lieu of a collar. 'She's politician
enough to know that.'

Mrs. Fox-Moore looked through the man. 'The only reassuring thing I see
in the situation,' she said to her sister, 'is that they don't find many
women to come and listen to their nonsense.'

'Well, they've got you and me! Awful thought! Suppose they converted
us!'

Mrs. Fox-Moore didn't even trouble to reply to such levity. What was
interesting was the discovery that this 'chairman,' before an audience
so unpromising, not only held her own when she was interrupted and
harassed by the crowd--even more surprising she bore with the most
recalcitrant members of it--tried to win them over, and yet when they
were rude, did not withhold reproof, and at times looked down upon them
with so fine a scorn that it seemed as if even those ruffianly young men
felt the edge of it. Certainly a curious sight--this well-bred woman
standing there in front of the soaring column, talking with grave
passion to those loafers about the 'Great Woman Question,' and they
treating it as a Sunday afternoon street entertainment.

The next speaker was a working woman, the significance of whose
appearance in that place and in that company was so little apprehended
by the two ladies in the crowd that they agreed in laughingly
commiserating the chairman for not having more of her own kind to back
her up in her absurd contention. Though the second speaker merely bored
the two who, having no key either to her pathos or her power, saw
nothing but 'low cockney effrontery' in her effort, she nevertheless had
a distinct success with the crowd. Here was somebody speaking their own
language--they paid her the tribute of their loudest hoots mixed with
applause. She never lost her hold on them until the appearance on the
plinth of a grave, rugged, middle-ag