the direction of Trafalgar Road; he was in close conversation with
another man. She kept within the shelter of the shop until the two had
gone by. She did not want to meet George Cannon, with whom she had not
had speech since the interview at the Cedars; he had written to her
about the property sales, and she had replied. There was no reason why
she should hesitate to meet him. But she wished not to complicate the
situation. She thought: "If he saw me, he'd come across and speak to me,
and I might have to introduce him to all these people, and goodness
knows what!" The contretemps caused her heart to beat.

When they emerged from the shop Janet, a few yards ahead with Mr.
Orgreave, was beckoning.

III

Hilda stood on a barrel by the side of Edwin Clayhanger on another
barrel. There, from the top of St. Luke's Square, they surveyed a vast
rectangular carpet of upturned faces that made a pattern of pale dots on
a coloured and black groundwork. Nearly all the children of Bursley,
thousands upon thousands, were massed in the Square, wedged in tight
together, so that there seemed not to be an inch of space anywhere
between the shuttered shop fronts on the east of the Square and the
shuttered shop fronts on the west of the Square. At the bottom of the
Square a row of railway lorries were crammed with tiny babes--or such
they appeared--toddlers too weak to walk in processions. At the top of
the Square a large platform full of bearded adults rose like an island
out of the unconscious sea of infants. And from every window of every
house adults looked down in safe ease upon that wavy ocean over which
banners gleamed in the dazzling and fierce sunshine.

She might have put up her sunshade. But she would not do so. She
thought: "If all those children can stand the sun without fainting, I
can!" She was extraordinarily affected by the mere sight of the immense
multitude of children; they were as helpless and as fatalistic as sheep,
utterly at the mercy of the adults who had herded them. There was about
them a collective wistfulness that cut the heart; to dwell on the idea
of it would have brought her to tears. And when the multitude sang, so
lustily, so willingly, so bravely, pouring forth with the brass
instruments a volume of tone enormous and majestic, she had a tightness
of the throat that was excrutiating. The Centenary of Sunday Schools was
quite other than she had expected; she had not bargained for these
emotions.