“Ow, one must ’ave a man about the plice. Feels more ’omely-like.”
“Does he work for you?”
“I don’t fink.”
“Is he very good to you?”
The woman, not unnaturally, began to get restive. “’Oo ye’re gettin’ at? Nat’rally a man ain’t soothin’ syrup when ’e come ’ome as my young man come ’ome an hour ago. ’E’s better’n some.”
There was a long silence. Then the suffragette said, “Women seem to be extraordinarily cheap in the market. They hire themselves out to the man who hits the hardest. It makes one almost tired of being a woman.”
“Look ’ere ...” said the patient wrathfully, but she stopped there. Presently she sat up and said, “I’m goin’ to doctor’s now. And if you ain’t still too tired, miss, perhaps you’ll see me as fur as the ’orspital....”
So the suffragette laid hold of the Closed Door of the Brown Borough, by the handle of her fanatic determination. She never saw the impossibility of victory. It was the earliest of the early spring, and there was hope in the air. For many weeks hope was her only luxury. With it she sweetened her bread and margarine when she rose, to the tune of it she munched her nightly tripe and onions. She saw the mirage of the end in sight, and with her great faith she almost made it real. She was a blind optimist where women were concerned.
On the initiative of the priest’s sister, she attended the Church Girls’ Club three evenings a week. On her own initiative she played the Church false, and established in its own field of labour, behind its back, the foundation of her task.
It was originally Miss Wigsky’s fault. Miss Wigsky was a girl of practical energy, a warring spirit, a potential suffragette. She had long been a militant resister of the Church Club ideal, but when the suffragette became one of its regular adherents, Miss Wigsky joined it at once. Hers was the active responsibility for what followed, and ’Tilda’s the passive. I think I have mentioned ’Tilda before, though not by name. She was a small white creature who had committed the absurdity of losing her heart to the suffragette at first sight, and had sealed her admiration by laying bare the letter of her chap at their first meeting.