“What is this vote?” asked the Queen. “Is it a charm? What do they do with it?”
“I don’t know,” said the harassed Cyril; “it’s just a vote, that’s all! They don’t do anything particular with it.”
“I see,” said the Queen; “a sort of plaything. Well, I wish that all these slaves may have in their hands this moment their fill of their favourite meat and drink.”
Instantly all the people in the Mile End Road, and in all the other streets where poor people live, found their hands full of things to eat and drink. From the cab window could be seen persons carrying every kind of food, and bottles and cans as well. Roast meat, fowls, red lobsters, great yellowy crabs, fried fish, boiled pork, beef-steak puddings, baked onions, mutton pies; most of the young people had oranges and sweets and cake. It made an enormous change in the look of the Mile End Road—brightened it up, so to speak, and brightened up, more than you can possibly imagine, the faces of the people.
“Makes a difference, doesn’t it?” said the Queen.
“That’s the best wish you’ve had yet,” said Jane with cordial approval.
“I ain’t agoin’ to drive you no further,” he said. “Out you gets.”
“I wants my tea,” he said; and they saw that on the box of the cab was a mound of cabbage, with pork chops and apple sauce, a duck, and a spotted currant pudding. Also a large can.
“You pay me my fare,” he said threateningly, and looked down at the mound, muttering again about his tea.
“We’ll take another cab,” said Cyril with dignity. “Give me change for a sovereign, if you please.”
But the cabman, as it turned out, was not at all a nice character. He took the sovereign, whipped up his horse, and disappeared in the stream of cabs and omnibuses and wagons, without giving them any change at all.
Already a little crowd was collecting round the party.
“Come on,” said Robert, leading the wrong way.
The crowd round them thickened. They were in a narrow street where many gentlemen in black coats and without hats were standing about on the pavement talking very loudly.
“How ugly their clothes are,” said the Queen of Babylon. “They’d be rather fine men, some of them, if they were dressed decently, especially the ones with the beautiful long, curved noses. I wish they were dressed like the Babylonians of my court.”