'Why don't you make her sit down?' Vida whispered to Miss Blunt. 'Because I've got to see what she's made of.' 'But surely you see! She's awful!' 'Not half so bad as lots of men when they first try. If she weathers this, she'll be a speaker some day.' At last, having told her story through the interruptions--told it badly, brokenly, but to the end--having given proofs that lead-poisoning among women was on the increase and read out from her poor crumpled, shaking notes, the statistics of infant and still-birth mortality, the unhappy new helper sat down. Miss Blunt leaned over, and whispered, 'That's all right! I was wrong. This is nearly as bad as Hyde Park,' and with that jumped up to give the crowd a piece of her mind. They sniggered, but they quieted down, all but one. 'Yes, you are the gentleman, you there with the polo cap, who doesn't believe in giving a fair hearing. I would like to ask that man who thinks himself so superior, _that_ one in the grey cap, whether he is capable of standing up here on this bench and addressing the crowd.' 'Hear, hear.' 'Yes! Get on the bench. Up with him.' A slight scrimmage, and an agitated man was observed to be seeking refuge on the outskirts. 'Bad as Miss Scammell was, she made me rather ashamed of myself,' Vida confided to Borrodaile. 'Yes,' he said sympathetically, 'it always makes one rather ashamed--even if it's a man making public failure.' 'Oh, that wasn't what I meant. _She_ at least tried. But I--I feel I'm a type of all the idle women the world over. Leaving it to the poor and the ill-equipped to----' 'To keep the world from slipping into chaos?' he inquired genially. She hadn't heard. Her eyes were fastened on the chairwoman. 'After all, they've got Ernestine,' Vida exulted under her breath. Borrodaile fell to studying this aspect of the face whose every change he had thought he knew so well. What was the new thing in it? Not admiration merely, not affection alone--something almost fierce behind the half-protecting tenderness with which she watched the chairman's duel with the mob. Borrodaile lifted a hand--people were far too engrossed, he knew, to notice--and he laid it on Vida's, which had tightened on the back of the bench. 'My dear!' he said wondering and low as one would to wake a sleepwalker. She answered without looking at him, 'What is it?' He seemed not to know quite how to frame his protest. 'She can carry _you_ along at least!' he grumbled. 'You forget everybody else!' Vida smiled. It was so plain whom he meant by 'everybody.' Lord Borrodaile gave a faint laugh. He probably knew that would 'bring her round.' It did. It brought her quick eyes to his face; it brought low words. '_Please!_ Don't let her see you--laughing, I mean.'