'You're in too big a hurry,' some one shouted. 'All the Liberals want is a little time.'
'Time! You seem not to know that the first petition in favour of giving us the Franchise was signed in 1866.'
'How do you know?'
She paused a moment, taken off her guard by the suddenness of the attack.
'You wasn't there!'
'That was the trouble. Haw! Haw!'
'That petition,' she said, 'was presented forty years ago.'
'Give 'er a 'reain' now she 'as got out of 'er crydle.'
'It was presented to the House of Commons by John Stuart Mill. Give the Liberals time!' she echoed. 'Thirty-three years ago memorials in favour of the suffrage were presented to Mr. Gladstone and Mr. Disraeli. In 1896, 257,000 women of these British Isles signed an appeal to the members of Parliament. Bills or Resolutions have been before the House, on and off, for the last thirty-six years. All that "time" thrown away! At the opening of this year we found ourselves with no assurance that if we went on in the same way, any girl born into the world in our time would ever be able to exercise the rights of citizenship though she lived to be a hundred. That was why we said all this has been in vain. We must try some other way. How did you working men get the suffrage, we asked ourselves. Well, we turned up the records—and we saw. We don't want to follow such a violent example. We would much rather not—but if that's the only way we can make the country see we're in earnest—we are prepared to show them!'
'An' they'll show you!'