'I say, Mary, w'en yer get yer rights will y' be a perliceman?' Even the tall, grave guardians of the peace ranged about the monument, even they smiled at the suggested image.
After all, it might not be so uninteresting to listen to these people for a few minutes. It wasn't often that life presented such an opportunity. It probably would never occur again. These women on the plinth must be not alone of a different world, but of a different clay, since they not only did not shrink from disgracing themselves—women had been capable of that before—but these didn't even mind ridicule. Which was new.
Just then the mother of the Gracchi came to the edge of the plinth to open the meeting.
'Friends!' she began. The crowd hooted that proposition to start with. But the pale woman with the candid eyes went on as calmly as though she had been received with polite applause, telling the jeering crowd several things they certainly had not known before, that, among other matters, they were met there to pass a censure on the Government——
'Haw! haw!'
'’Ear, 'ear!' said the deaf old newsvendor, with his free hand up to his ear.
'And to express our sympathy with the brave women——'
The staccato cries throughout the audience dissolved into one general hoot; but above it sounded the old newsvendor's '’Ear, 'ear!'
'’E can't 'ear without 'e shouts about it.'
'Try and keep yerself quiet,' said he, with dignity. 'We ain't 'ere to 'ear you.'