'Hooray for the——'
Through the cheering you heard Ernestine saying, 'No, I didn't mean the Prime Minister. The Prime Minister, between you and me, is as good a Suffragist as any of us. Only he——well, he likes his comfort, does the Prime Minister!'
When Ernestine looked like that the crowd roared with laughter. Yet it was impossible not to feel that when she herself smiled it was because she couldn't help it, and not, singularly enough, because of any dependence she placed upon the value of dimples as an asset of persuasion. What she seemed to be after was to stir these people up. It could not be denied that she knew how to do it, any more than it could be doubted that she was ignorant of how large a part in her success was played by a peculiarly amusing and provocative personality. Always she was the first to be grave again.
'Now if you noisy young men can manage to keep quiet for a minute, I'll tell you a little about our tactics,' she said obligingly.
'We know! Breakin' up meetings!'
'Rotten tactics!'
'That only shows you don't understand them yet. Now I'll explain to you.'
A little wind had sprung up and ruffled her hair. It blew open her long plain coat. It even threatened to carry away her foolish flapping hat. She held it on at critical moments, and tilted her delicate little Greuze-like face at a bewitching angle, and all the while that she was looking so fetching, she was briskly trouncing by turns the Liberal party and the delighted crowd. The man of the long moustachios, who had been swept to the other side of the monument, returned to his old inquiry with mounting cheer—
'Are we down'earted? Oh, no!'
'Pore man! 'Ave a little pity on us, miss!'