But the old man had no mind left for a mere bystander—it was all absorbed in Suffragettes.
'’is feet are filthy muddy, 'm,' whispered Gorringe.
It may have been in part the maid's genteel horror of such proximities that steeled Miss Levering to endure them. Under circumstances like these the observant are reminded that no section of the modern community is so scornfully aristocratic as our servants. Their horror of the meanly-apparelled and the humble is beyond the scorn of kings. The fine lady shares her shrinking with those inveterate enemies of democracy, the lackey who shuts the door in the shabby stranger's face, and the dog who barks a beggar from the gate.
And so while the maid drew her own skirts aside and held her nose high in the air, the gentlewoman stood faintly smiling at the queer scene.
Alas! no Mrs. Chisholm. It looked as if they must have been hard up for speakers to-day, for two of them were younger even than Miss Claxton of the tam-o'-shanter. One of them couldn't be more than nineteen.
'How dreadful to put such very young girls up there to be stared at by all these louts!'
'Oh, yes, 'm, quite 'orrid,' agreed the maid, but with the air of 'What can you expect of persons so low?'
'However, the young girls seem to have as much self-possession as the older ones!' pursued Miss Levering, as she looked in vain for any sign of flinching from the sallies of cockney impudence directed at the occupants of the cart.
They exhibited, too, what was perhaps even stranger—an utter absence of any flaunting of courage or the smallest show of defiance. What was this armour that looked like mere indifference? It couldn't be that those quiet-looking young girls were indifferent to the ordeal of standing up there before a crowd of jeering rowdies whose less objectionable utterances were: 'Where did you get that 'at?' 'The one in green is my girl!' 'Got yer dog-whip, miss?' and such-like utterances.