Women -- Great Britain -- Social conditions; Women -- Suffrage -- Great Britain
"Isn't that rather a mistake?" she suggested, with the splendid
effrontery of the new recruit. "It is so important to attract the
leisured woman who won't go to public meetings for fear of being stuck
with a hatpin. I'm really afraid my crowd won't come unless they see a
name they know on the cards." Finding that this made no appeal to one
who had heard it often before, she asked in a resigned tone if a window
breaker would be available. "If I could put on the invitation card--'Why
I broke a Prime Minister's window, by One who has done it,' they'd come
in flocks. No, it wouldn't matter _much_ if she had broken somebody
else's window. As long as she had broken something--do _you_ speak, by
the way? Your voice is hardly strong enough, perhaps?"
The suffrage organiser, hoarse with having held two open-air meetings a
day for the past week, admitted that she did speak sometimes. "I've been
to prison too, if that is any good," she added cynically.
The cynicism was unperceived. "Have you? But that will be perfectly
delightful! Can I promise them that you will speak about picking oakum
and doing the treadmill? Oh, don't they? I thought all the Suffragettes
picked oakum in Holloway, and that was why they--never mind! You've
really eaten skilly, and that ought to fetch them, if anything will. The
Chair? Oh, I really don't think I _could_;--I should die of terror, I
know I should. What should I have to do? Yes, I suppose I could tell
them why I want a vote. I always have said that women who paid rates and
taxes--yes, Wednesday at nine o'clock. You'll come and dine first, won't
you? It's so good for the unconverted to meet you at dinner, just to see
that you do know how to hold a knife and fork. My husband is so very
much opposed; I like to do all I can in a _quiet_ way to show him that
the Suffragettes are _not_ all--can't you really? Well, come as early as
you can; I shall be simply dead with nervousness if I'm left
unsupported. By the way, you'll wear your most feminine frock, won't
you? I hope you don't mind my mentioning it, but it is so important to
impress the leisured woman--to say nothing of my husband! I am so
anxious to avoid causing dissension in the home; I think that would be
_wrong_, don't you? Of course, I shall let them all think that you may
turn up in goloshes and spectacles; it will make the contrast all the
greater, and that is so good for the cause!"
"Mrs. Fontenella wants to give a drawing-room meeting," said the
organiser, when she returned to the office. "She seems to have a curious
set of friends who look upon suffrage as a sort of music hall
entertainment; so she wants me to speak because I have picked oakum in
Holloway, and you, because you have broken something. I think she must
be an Anti by birth."
"Oh, no," answered the woman who had broken something. "She is really a
Suffragette by birth, and only an Anti by marriage. I am glad we have
won her back again."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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