'Wait a moment,' said Vida to her companions. She looked back. It was plain, from Ernestine's face, she was not going to let the meeting break up on that note. 'Don't you think it a little strange, considering the well-known chivalry among men--don't you think it strange that against no reform the world has ever seen----?' 'Reform! Wot rot!' 'If you don't admit it's reform, call it revolt!' She threw the red-hot word out among the people as if its fire scorched her. 'Against no revolt has there ever been such a torrent of ridicule let loose as against the Women's Movement. It almost seems as if--in spite of men's well-known protecting tenderness towards woman--it almost seems as if there's nothing in this world so funny to a man as a woman!' 'Haw! Haw! Got it right that time!' Borrodaile was smiling, too. 'Do you know,' Vida asked, 'who those men are who have just stopped?' 'No.' 'I believe Ernestine does.' 'Oh, perhaps they're bold bad members of Parliament.' 'Some of us,' she was saying, 'have read a little history. We have read how every struggle towards freedom has met with opposition and abuse. We expected to have our share of those things. But we find that no movement before ours has ever had so much laughter to face.' Through the renewed merriment she went on: 'Yes, you wonder I admit that. We don't deny anything that's true. And I'll tell you another thing! We aren't made any prouder of our men-folk by the discovery that behind their old theory of woman as "half angel, half idiot," is a sneaking feeling that "woman is a huge joke."' 'Or just a little one for a penny like you!' 'Men have imagined--they imagine still, that we have never noticed how ridiculous _they_ can be. You see'--she leaned over and spoke confidentially--'we've never dared break it to them.' 'Haw! Haw!' 'We know they _couldn't bear it_.' 'Oh-h!' 'So we've done all our laughing in our sleeves. Yes--and some years our sleeves had to be made--like balloons!' She pulled out the loose alpaca of her own while the workmen chuckled with appreciation. 'I bet on Ernestine any'ow', said a young man, with an air of admitting himself a bold original fellow.