Then a number of voices shouted—
"Reform! Reform! Are ye for Reform? you grand folks; if ye are, speak out!"
"Let go the horses' heads!" said Piers. "Let go! How dare you obstruct the high road?"
"Aye! aye! you young fool; we'll teach you manners!" and one of the men clenched his fist and shook it at Piers. In another moment the crowd from behind, which Susan Priday had seen, came breathlessly up the hill, women with children in their arms, all screaming, at the top of their voices, "Reform! Reform!"
One woman held up a child with a pinched, wan face, and said—
"You rich folks, you'd trample on us if you could, and we are starving! Look here!" and she bared the legs of the poor emaciated baby. "Look here! Look at your fat, stuffed-out childer, and look at this!"
"Look 'ee here, missus; we are a-going to Bristol to cry for Reform. If you say you will have nothing to do with the tyrant, Wetherall, and his cursed lot, you may go on. If not, we'll seize the carriage, we'll turn ye all out into the road, and we'll drive in state to the big meeting in Queen's Square! My! what a lark that will be!"
"Listen," Joyce said, standing up in the carriage with her child in her arms; "I am on my way home with these little children. Surely you will not stop me and endanger their lives?"
"We will! we will! if you don't give us your word you are for Reform and dead against Wetherall."
"Why," Joyce said fearlessly, "only a year ago, and near this very place, the men and women of Bristol shouted, 'Long live Wetherall!' And now!"