Voice. They ought ter sent yer to 'Olloway—do y' good.
Old Newsvendor. You go on, Miss, don't mind 'im.
Voice. Wot d'you expect from a pig but a grunt?
Miss L. You're told the case will be at two o'clock, and it's really called for eleven. Well, I took a great deal of trouble, and I didn't believe what I was told—
(Warming a little to her task.)
Yes, that's almost the first thing we have to learn—to get over our touching faith that, because a man tells us something, it's true. I got to the right court, and I was so anxious not to be late, I was too early. The case before the Women's was just coming on. I heard a noise. At the door I saw the helmets of two policemen, and I said to myself: "What sort of crime shall I have to sit and hear about? Is this a burglar coming along between the two big policemen, or will it be a murderer? What sort of felon is to stand in the dock before the women whose crime is they ask for the vote?" But, try as I would, I couldn't see the prisoner. My heart misgave me. Is it a woman, I wondered? Then the policemen got nearer, and I saw—(she waits an instant)—a little, thin, half-starved boy. What do you think he was charged with? Stealing. What had he been stealing—that small criminal? Milk. It seemed to me as I sat there looking on, that the men who had the affairs of the world in their hands from the beginning, and who've made so poor a business of it——
Voices. Oh! oh! Pore benighted man! Are we down-'earted? Oh, no!
Miss L.—so poor a business of it as to have the poor and the unemployed in the condition they're in to-day—when your only remedy for a starving child is to hale him off to the police-court—because he had managed to get a little milk—well, I did wonder that the men refuse to be helped with a problem they've so notoriously failed at. I began to say to myself: "Isn't it time the women lent a hand?"
A Voice. Would you have women magistrates?