(Applause, chiefly ironic, laughter, a general moving closer and knitting up of attention. Ernestine Blunt is about twenty-four, but looks younger. She is very downright, not to say pugnacious—the something amusing and attractive about her is there, as it were, against her will, and the more fetching for that. She has no conventional gestures, and none of any sort at first. As she warms to her work she uses her slim hands to enforce her emphasis, but as though unconsciously. Her manner of speech is less monotonous than that of the average woman-speaker, but she, too, has a fashion of leaning all her weight on the end of the sentence. She brings out the final word or two with an effort of underscoring, and makes a forward motion of the slim body as if the better to drive the last nail in. She evidently means to be immensely practical—the kind who is pleased to think she hasn't a grain of sentimentality in her composition, and whose feeling, when it does all but master her, communicates itself magnetically to others. )
Miss Ernestine Blunt. Perhaps I'd better begin by explaining a little about our "tactics."
(Cries of "Tactics! We know!" "Mykin' trouble!" "Public scandal!")
To make you understand what we've done, I must remind you of what others have done. Perhaps you don't know that women first petitioned Parliament for the Franchise as long ago as 1866.
Voice. How do you know?
(She pauses a moment, taken off her guard by the suddenness of the attack.)
Voice. You wasn't there!
Voice. That was the trouble. Haw! haw!
Miss E. B. And the petition was presented——
Voice. Give 'er a 'earin' now she 'as got out of 'er crydle.