"No; though they used to do that now and then. But this was at the last strike which happened to come during a drought. One of their leaders said to them: 'Take all the water you can; drain the city dry, make the rich give up their baths,--then perhaps they will attend to you.' They actually had the power; they organized the whole of the working district, and one night they turned on all the taps, the street fountains as well. And we, because at last they were taking their full share, were threatened with a water famine! Yes, if they had those tenement baths which the last Housing Commission recommended they could run us dry as their leader proposed,--hold the whole city up to ransom and dictate terms. As it was even those taps proved dangerous, so we gave them buttons instead; and of course the death-rate has gone up." "And now the next strike has come." "Ah, yes, but this is not such a large one and so, as it isn't reckoned 'dangerous,' the Government doesn't interfere, and no one outside troubles about the rights of it." They were moving on the outskirts of a crowd in the center of which a demonstration of strikers was going on. Gaunt, hungry, apathetic faces formed the bulk of them; in their midst a man with a big voice talked heroically of the rights of labor and prophesied victory. They stood to listen for a while, then moved on. At the corner of a side-street which they crossed stood a smaller group; a woman, her hat tied round with a motor-veil, stood waving her arms from an orange-box. "Who are those?" inquired Max. "Women Chartists," said Sister Jenifer. "What are they doing here?" "They go wherever they can get a hearing." Max stopped to listen a little satirically; he had never heard a woman speaking in public before. Presently he turned to his guide and found that her eye was on him. "Shall we go on?" he said. "This does not interest you, then?" "It is a subject about which I know nothing." "But you came to learn." "Well,--is that woman telling the truth?" "No, not exactly." "Does she know what she is talking about?" "Not as well as she ought to." "Then, isn't that sufficient?" "You have listened to men here whose statements were just as wide of the mark, and whose proposals were just as useless." "Yes, so you warned me; but what I find instructive is not the speaker but the crowd." "You have a crowd here." "A much smaller one." "So you are for the majorities?" Max acknowledged the stroke. "Very well," he said; "let us go back." "No, I only wanted you to notice the crowd. Did they seem interested?" "They listened." "That is something, is it not, when she was talking of things that to their minds hardly concerned them?" "But you say she was not telling the truth." "She was ignorant, and she exaggerated; but for all they know what she is saying might be gospel." "Is that how you would have it preached?"