"Mr. Chairman, I am only a woman, amongst all you men, but I want you to let me speak."
Edna leant forward in her favourite attitude, her arms folded upon the table, her furs flung back.
"Delighted, Lady Rossiter, delighted to hear your views," growled the Alderman.
Julian, looking down his nose, saw Fuller thrust his bull-neck forward and jab viciously at the blotting-paper in front of him with a blunt pencil.
Mark Easter was pulling at his moustache, leaning well back in his chair, and Miss Marchrose was gazing at Lady Rossiter. Her dark brows were drawn together in a slight frown, that might have indicated puzzledom or disapproval alike.
"It seems to me," said Edna, in the time-honoured opening phrase of the amateur, "it seems to me, that we perhaps none of us quite realise what it would mean to ask any of the staff to give up that precious Saturday. I always feel that it must mean so much to them. We, who can wander out into God's beautiful sunshine at will, can hardly grasp what it must be like to be imprisoned between four walls all the week, without free time, without access to the fresh air, the movement of the world outside. Oh," cried Edna, in a very impassioned manner indeed, "I think if one only puts oneself into the place of those girl and women prisoners, toiling for their bread and butter all the week, it will become impossible to take away the poor little Saturday half-holiday which is all they have! There is no one, I can confidently say, who has our great national cause more at heart than I have, who would do more to bring the light of education into the drab lives of those poor shop creatures, but it seems to me that, as members of the committee, we must give our first thought, our first consideration, to our own—our very own workers. I, personally, have always felt the staff at the College to be my very own."
Julian dared not glance at the representatives of Lady Rossiter's very own, so vividly did his imagination set before him the infuriated lowering of Fuller's dark brow, and the probable line of satire round Miss Marchrose's curving lips.
He had frequently before heard Lady Rossiter moved to a very similar eloquence, but neither custom nor a resolute avoidance of any eye in the room could prevent him from wincing inwardly while her voice rang out.
"It almost seems to me that we forget sometimes—oh, I'm not speaking personally, Heaven knows, I'm weak enough myself—but sometimes I think we forget that it's flesh and blood like our own that we're dealing with. These men and women who work for a living are human beings like ourselves!"
An electric silence followed the announcement.