When I am very tired and see the high and friendly smile of St. Paul’s curved across the sky, I feel as if I am near home. I always think St. Paul’s is like a mother to all London, while Westminster Abbey is like a nun, the bride of heaven, with an infinite scorn of you and me. St. Paul’s stands at the top of the hill of difficulty, and after that your feet walk by themselves down Ludgate Hill.
There was a burst of song from all parts of the procession as it passed that friendly doomed milestone. The burst was simultaneous, but the song was too various to be really effective.
“Votes for Women,” shouted the little mother. “I sy, miss, when are you comin’ dahn to the Brown Borough to ’elp wiv votes for women? We ain’t got nobody there as kin talk like you.”
“Am I coming down?” asked the suffragette, who had a vague idea that she had said many things, now forgotten. “I never speak at meetings now. My brain is always wanting to say the next thing but one, and my tongue is always saying the thing before last. There’s too much to be said about Votes for Women.”
“Meetin’s...” said the little mother in a voice of scorn. “Tain’t meetin’s we want. It’s somebody jus’ to talk ornery, as if they was a friend-like. Somebody to live up the street—if you unnerstan’ me—an’ drop in, an’ be interested. When my little gel died, lars’ October, an’ ’ole lot of lidies made enquiries, an’ got me a few ’alfpence a week to git on wiv till I could get back to the box-miking. I useter ’ave to go to an orfice an’ answer questions, an’ the lidy useter sy she was sorry to seem ’quisitive, but she ses—If some on yer cheat, you mus’ all on yer suffer.... Bless you, I didn’ mind answering questions, but I was very low then, an’ I useter tike it ’ard that none o’ them lidies never seemed interested. Nobody never as’t wot was the nime o’ my little gel that died, nor ’ow old she was, nor nothink about ’er pretty wys that she useter ’ave.... ’Tisn’t that they ain’t kind, but it’s being treated in a crowd-like as comes ’ard, an’ there’s many feels the sime....”
“What do you expect?” asked the poetess, who was now detached from the policeman. “I am myself a C.O.S. secretary, so I know something about it. None of us have time to do more than is really necessary. And when there’s public money in question—well, it’s all very well, but one can’t be too careful.”
“When there’s money in question you may be right, miss,” said the little mother. “But it ain’t allus a question of money, an’ it seems to me as ’ow, wiv votes fer women, if some on them suffragettes ’ud stop talking about women’s wiges at meetin’s, an’ come an’ look at wiges at ’ome, they’d ’it a lot of women wot thinks now as ’ow votes for women is only a public thing an’ don’t matter outside Trafalgar Square. It seems to ’it you ’arder if a person’s friendly than if they’re heloquent....”
“Something is happening in front,” said the poetess, looking wildly round for her policeman.
“The police have turned on us,” said the suffragette. “They always do in the Strand. Downing Street gets nervous when we get as near as this.”
It was too true. The police, relieved to be at last freed from the burden of their false position, were characteristic of their profession.