"Eighty of 'em! How about Holloway?" jeered the man in the waistcoat.
She turned on him swiftly. "If you had your vote taken from you to-morrow, wouldn't you have the pluck to go to prison to get it back?" she asked, suddenly in deadly earnest.
Any crowd loves a fighter, and this one howled with delight. The lady in the French hat noticed that listening women, who had hitherto shown no open approval of what was said, nodded furtively and caught their breath when the speaker fired up in defence of women.
"Why, they go to prison because they like it, don't they?" observed the amused man who answered to the name of Jack. He had not intended this for an audible interruption, but nothing escaped the ear of the woman on the sugar-box.
"If you think a woman's ordinary life outside prison is as dreary as all that, don't you think it's time you gave her the power to improve her conditions, so that she needn't go to Holloway for a pleasant change?" she shot back at him, hot with scorn; and again listening women flushed with nervous pleasure. "Some of our comrades are coming out of prison next Saturday," the speaker went on rapidly; "and if you want to give them a welcome, as I know you do"—here she paused to allow time for yells of derision and references to skilly—"come and walk in our procession from Holloway gates."
"What! And be taken for gaol-birds too? Not much!" roared the man of sporting appearance.
"We'll come, miss; we'll be there!" suddenly called the woman with the bundle; and curiously enough, the crowd respected that and stopped jeering. But the speaker of a hundred open-air meetings, knowing her crowd better than it knew itself, saw that it had had enough, and called for questions. These were swiftly disposed of, being principally of the wash-tub order, already answered in her speech; and observing serenely that she concluded everybody was now converted, the Suffragette came down from her perch.
She and her companion were instantly swallowed up in the jostling, chattering crowd, and the well-dressed woman appealed to Jack.
"Do help them to get out of this," she said, clutching anxiously at his arm. "They'll be crushed to death, I know they will!"
"Eh, what? My dear girl, they're much better able to take care of themselves than I am," observed Jack tranquilly. "Besides, they're not being crushed to death. You couldn't crush a Suffragette if you tried."