“We’ve never seen one, only one or two of us who were at the meeting last night. The rest of us didn’t go, we was that tired, and we’re wondering if you wouldn’t give us a speech here.”
“Oh—really—I rarely speak on Sunday, and even suffragettes must rest, you know.”
The woman’s face fell, but she said politely, “Of course. We know what work is. But we may never have another chance—and we’re that curious. We’d like to know what it’s all about.”
Julia hesitated. What right had she to refuse this simple request? It was her business to advance the cause of Suffrage and make converts wherever she could. Nor was she tired. She was merely in a dreaming mood, and wanted to think of the Brontës; to anticipate, as she realized in a flash of annoyance, the rereading of Tay’s letter. She had deliberately been trying to forget it.
“I will speak with pleasure,” she said. “Have you something I could stand on? I’m not very tall, you know.”
“One of the men went for a table. We made sure you would be so kind.”
The man was even now stalking up the moor with a kitchen table balanced on his head. As Julia walked toward the smiling company she felt once more the ardent propagandist.
“If I may, ma’am,” said a tall young man. He lifted her lightly and stood her on the table.
“Now,” said Julia, smiling down into several hundred faces, a few set in disdain, but for the most part friendly, “what is it you wish me to tell you? How much do you know of this great movement?”
“Well,” said one of the older women, “we read a lot about militants, and suffragettes, and fighting the police, and going to prison, and big meetings all over England, and we’d like to know what it’s all about. That’s all.”