'Who?' asked Miss Levering.
'Why, the Suffrage people.'
'Oh! Are you going to listen to them?'
'Yes; that's what I've come all this way for.' And she and her bare-legged offspring melted into the growing crowd.
Vida turned to the maid and met her superior smile. 'That woman says she has come a long way to hear these people advocating Woman's Suffrage,' and slowly with an air of complete detachment she approached the edge of the crowd, followed by the supercilious maid. They were quickly hemmed in by people who seemed to spring up out of the ground. It was curious to look back over the vivid green expanse and see the dotted humanity running like ants from all directions to listen to this handful of dowdy women in a cart!
In finding her way through the crowd it would appear that the lady was not much sustained by the presence of a servant, however well-meaning. Much out of place in such a gathering as Mrs. Fox-Moore or any ultra-oldfashioned woman was, still more incongruous showed there the relation of mistress and maid. The punctilious Gorringe was plainly horrified at the proximity to her mistress of these canaille, and the mistress was not so absorbed it would seem but what she felt the affront to seemliness in a servant's seeing her pushed and shoved aside—treated with slight regard or none. Necessary either to leave the scene with lofty disapproval, or else make light of the discomfort.
'It doesn't matter!' she assured the girl, who was trying to protect her mistress's dainty wrap from contact with a grimy tramp. And, again, when half a dozen boys forced their way past, 'It's all right!' she nodded to the maid, 'it's no worse than the crowd at Charing Cross coming over from Paris.'
But it was much worse, and Gorringe knew it. 'The old man is standing on your gown, miss.'
'Oh, would you mind——' Miss Levering politely suggested another place for his feet.