Vida bit her lip. Her own taste was less pure. 'We needn't try to get any nearer,' she said hastily. 'This chairman-person can make herself heard without screeching.'
But having lost the key during the passage over the pipe, they could only make out that she was justifying some one to the mob, some one who apparently was coming in for too much sharp criticism for the chairman to fling her to the wolves without first diverting them a little. The battle of words that ensued was almost entirely unintelligible to the two ladies, but they gathered, through means more expressive than speech, that the chairman was dealing with some sort of crisis in the temper of the meeting, brought about by the mention of a name.
The only thing clear was that she was neither going to give in, nor going to turn over the meeting in a state of ferment to some less practised hand.
'Yes, she did! She had a perfect right,' the chairman maintained against a storm of noes—'more than a right, a duty, to perform in going with that deputation on public business to the house of a public servant, since, unlike the late Prime Minister, he had refused to women all opportunity to treat with him through the usual channels always open to citizens having a political grievance.'
'Citizens? Suffragettes!'
'Very well.' She set her mouth. 'Suffragettes if you like. To get an abuse listened to is the first thing; to get it understood is the next. Rather than not have our cause stand out clear and unmistakable before a preoccupied, careless world, we accept the clumsy label; we wear it proudly. And it won't be the first time in history that a name given in derision has become a badge of honour!'
Why, the woman's eyes were suffused!—a flush had mounted up to her hair!
How she cared!
'Yer ain't told us the reason ye want the vote.'