Most of the women loiterers seemed to be the victims, either of their small unearned incomes, or of somebody else's unpunctuality. One of these, after stamping her feet in unison with mine for more than half an hour, asked me if I had seen a lady in a green hat. I think I had seen hundreds, which was not very helpful; but the enquiry made an opening, and I shook my box gently and seductively in her direction. She was quite affable, told me she had believed in woman suffrage all her life, and thought it an excellent idea for other people to stand out in the rain collecting money for it. "It gives you a pinched look, and then people throw you something before they see what it is for," she added genially. Evidently my complexion had not taken her unawares in this way, for she made no effort to support the cause in which she had believed all her life. She had so many claims, she said. I understood what she meant when one of the claims, wearing a mountainous hat in emerald-green straw, bore down upon her with torrential apologies for being late, and carried her off to the shops. "It's for something to do up my every-evening black, and you have such a good eye for colour," was the cryptic remark I overheard, as they went. In about half an hour they were back again, and the girl in the green mountain was dropping two-pence in my box. She smiled rather nicely, and on a sudden impulse I asked her what she had bought for the every-evening black. She stared, laughed a little, and ended on a sigh. "Nothing," she confessed. "Isn't it tragic?" "It must be," I tried to agree. I suppose I succeeded in sounding a human note, for she still lingered. "I hope you'll get your vote soon, and not have to go on wasting your time like this," she said. "It isn't my vote particularly, or my waste of time," I called after her. But she was gone, her ridiculous hat bobbing up and down in the crowd like a Chinese lantern on a stick; and I wondered if she would some day make a truce with time and save her soul alive. Time, though a deadly murderer, does not succeed in killing all the people who are trying so hard to kill him; and hope, even for a serious cause, lurked sometimes in that stream of bored and idle passers-by, who seemed so bent on cheating their nature out of everything it demanded of them. It was always a pleasant shock when women and girls, wearing the most preposterous hats and the most fearsome of purple-spotted veils, slid something into my hand and hurried on, trying to look as if they had done nothing of the kind. And my knowledge of things human played me entirely false over the expensive dowager in sable and velvet. She had stood in front of the nearest shop window for some minutes, discussing with a patient companion the rival qualities of jet trimming and gold braid. "Jet lasts," she observed ponderously. "It does last," agreed the companion.