"And I like you, extraordinarily. I should like to work with you."
"There is nothing," said Rose Darragh, "any easier to arrange than that."
CHAPTER XXX
AN OLD ACQUAINTANCE
In the year 1910, a certain large gathering of suffragists occurring in New York, permission was sought and obtained for speaking in Union Square. Here and there, beneath the trees, sprang temporary tribunes sheathed with bunting the colour of gold; above them banners and banneroles of the same hue, black-lettered, VOTES FOR WOMEN. From each tribune now a woman was speaking, now a man. About speakers and tribunes pressed the crowd, good-natured, commenting, earnest in places. Each speaker had about ten minutes; time up, he or she stepped down; another took position. Sometimes the crowd laughed at a good story or at a barbed shaft skilfully shot; sometimes it applauded; sometimes it indulged in questions. Its units continually shifted; one or more speakers at this stand listened to, it went roaming for pastures new and brought up before the next tribune, whose crowd, roaming in its turn, filled the just vacated spaces. It was a still, pearl-grey mid-afternoon, the pale-brown leaves falling from the trees, the roar of the city softened, the square's frontier lines of tall buildings withdrawn, a little blurred, made looming and poetic. All was a picture, lightly shifting with gleams of gold and a woman's voice, earnest, lilting. The crowd increased until there was a great crowd. VOTES FOR WOMEN—VOTES FOR WOMEN—said the banners and the banneroles.
A man and a woman, leaving a taxicab on the Broadway facet of the Square, stood a moment upon the pavement. "What a crowd!" said the man. "There is speaking of some kind." He stopped a boy. "What is going on?"
"Suffragettes! Women speaking. Want ter vote. Ain't got no husbands.—I wouldn't let 'em! Say, ain't they gettin' too big for their places?" The boy stuck out his tongue and went away.
"Young hoodlum!" exclaimed the man with disgust.