Philip listened to this highly circumstantial narrative in silence. Finally he said:--
"I'm sorry for Brand. He may not be up to Miss Jennings's standard of gentility, but he is the best man we have, and I intend to make him foreman next week. I bet you he finishes high up in the Company's service."
"We shall see," he said. "Meanwhile, let us go and study the Suffragette in her natural state. I hear the Cause received a tremendous fillip last Sunday. Two policemen were jabbed in the eye with hatpins."
But the Suffragettes were not so conspicuous as they had expected. They did discover a group of intensely respectable and consciously virtuous females haranguing a small and apathetic audience from a lorry, but these had wrecked their chances of patronage from the start by labelling themselves (per banner) "Law-Abiding Suffragists."
At length their attention was attracted by what looked like a gigantic but listless football scrimmage, some four or five hundred strong, slowly and aimlessly circling about upon a wide grassy space. It was composed mainly of anæmic youths smoking cigarettes. But there was no sign of the ball. All that indicated the centre of activity of this peculiar game was the sound of some twenty or thirty male voices uplifted in song--Timothy explained that the melody was "Let's All Go Down the Strand and Have a Banana"--somewhere about the middle. A couple of impassive policemen appeared to be acting as referees.
Timothy addressed a citizen of London who was standing by.
"What is going on inside here?" he asked.
"Sufferingettes, sir," responded the citizen affably. "The police won't let 'em 'old no meetings now,--not off no waggin, that is,--so they 'as to just _talk_ to people, standin' about, friendly like, same as me and you. There's a couple of them in there just now"--indicating the scrimmage with his pipe. "You'll 'ear 'em arguin', now and then."
He was right. Presently there was a lull among the choristers. A high-pitched girlish voice became audible, trickling through the press.
"And I ask all of you, if _that_ isn't woman's work, what is?"
The speaker paused defiantly for a reply. It came, at once:--
The crowd dissolved into happy laughter, and the choir struck up "Meet Me in Dreamland Tonight."