"Dessay you find it chilly out here, not bein' used to it," she suggested, pulling the knot in the string tighter with her teeth.
"What are they doin' it for? That's what I arst! What are they doin' it for?" said the lame newsboy in a slightly peevish tone.
My agility in capturing the air-ball had made him sore, I think, though he had no reason to feel any envy on that score. Seeing the alertness and speed with which he dragged his useless limb after him when he came to show me anything uncomplimentary about the Suffragettes that happened to appear in his pink newspaper, I could but marvel at the thought of what he might have accomplished on two legs. One could only suppose that his agility, like the flower-lady's sympathy, was the result of a lifelong evasion of difficulties.
The elderly gentleman who sold the penny Conservative paper knew why we were doing it. He never failed to wink joyously to his friends if a male elector stopped to argue across my money-box about the cause for which I was shaking it.
"Doin' it to git theirselves 'usbands, that's what they're doin' it for," he would say conclusively, in denial of the usual contention of the anti-suffragist, that we are doing it because of our distaste for husbands.
When the enemy attacked, my fellow-hawkers waited with grim anticipation for my replies.
"Is not this a terrible condescension on your part?" asked one disapproving lady, putting up her lorgnette to read the inscription on the box. "Oh, I quite believe in your cause, but why do this sort of thing? How much better to get round the men another way!"
She looked gently pained when I explained rather obviously that I should consider that a condescension, and so would the right sort of man; and my companions looked with puzzled eyes after the retreating lady who seemed to belong to a strange world out of their ken, in which helplessness had a market value. It was pleasantly illuminating to find, however, as the week wore on, that they had come to accept me as an equal, not because I could hold my own against the passer-by, but because they saw me, like themselves, exposed to all the discomforts of being passed by. That, I am sure, is why the elderly paper-seller gave me so much friendly information about goloshes, and why the lame boy observed so sympathetically, one wet evening, that I had had a quiet day.
"Yes; nice and quiet, wasn't it?" I answered gladly, being a militant suffragist of many and strenuous experiences that would not generally be called either nice or quiet. It was only when I caught his astonished expression that I understood him to be referring, not to political passions, but to trade.
Even when you are filling the war chest at the edge of the pavement it is not impossible, I find, to spare a little pity for those who pass as well as for those who are passed by. "L'homme oisif tue le temps; le temps tue l'homme oisif," as it is expressed by the nation that knows better than any other, possibly, how to kill time gracefully. Time seemed to be killing a good many idle people, I thought, during the week of days that I stood outside that Tube station. The habitual hawker, of course, was a loiterer by profession; so was the friendly constable who remarked, "Well, you ladies do have to face somethink, you do!" referring, I imagine, to the snow, which was soft and soothing compared to some of the street witticisms I had to face in the course of business. The real waster was rather the person who stood at the entrance of the station, sometimes for hours, waiting, not for something to happen, or even in most cases for somebody to come, but just waiting.