It steadied her. 'Thank you for that,' she said, smiling. 'We couldn't have a better motto. How _are_ you to know if we can't somehow manage to tell you?' With a visible effort she went on, 'Well, _I_ certainly didn't know before that the sergeants and policemen are instructed to deceive the people as to the time such cases are heard.' 'It's just as hard,' said a bystander to his companion, '_just_ as hard for learned counsel in the august quiet of the Chancery Division to find out when their cases are really coming on.' 'You ask, and you're sent to Marlborough Police Court,' said Miss Levering, 'instead of to Marylebone.' 'They oughter send yer to 'Olloway--do y' good.' 'You go on, miss. Nobody minds 'im.' 'Wot can you expect from a pig but a grunt?' 'You are told the case will be at two o'clock, and it's really called for eleven. Well, I took a great deal of trouble, and I didn't believe what I was told.' She was warming a little to her task. 'Yes, that's almost the first thing we have to learn--to get over our touching faith that because a man tells us something, it's true. I got to the right court, and I was so anxious not to be late, I was too early.' 'Like a woman!' 'The case before the Suffragists' was just coming on. I heard a noise. I saw the helmets of two policemen.' 'No, you didn't. They don't wear their helmets in court.' 'They were coming in from the corridor. As I saw them, I said to myself, "What sort of crime shall I have to sit and hear about? Is this a burglar being brought along between the two big policemen, or will it be a murderer? What sort of felon is to stand in the dock before the people, whose crime is, they ask for the vote?" But try as I would, I couldn't see the prisoner. My heart misgave me. Is it some poor woman, I wondered?' A tipsy tramp, with his battered bowler over one eye, wheezed out, 'Drunk again!' with an accent of weary philosophy. 'Syme old tyle.' 'Then the policemen got nearer, and I saw'--she waited an instant--'a little thin, half-starved boy. What do you think he was charged with?' 'Travellin' first with a third-class ticket.' A boy offered a page out of personal history. 'Stealing. What had he been stealing, that small criminal? _Milk._ It seemed to me, as I sat there looking on, that the men who had had the affairs of the world in their hands from the beginning, and who've made so poor a business of it----' 'Oh, pore devils! give 'em a rest!' 'Who've made so bad a business of it as to have the poor and the unemployed in the condition they're in to-day, whose only remedy for a starving child is to hale him off to the police court, because he had managed to get a little milk, well, I did wonder that the men refuse to be helped with a problem they've so notoriously failed at. I began to say to myself, "Isn't it time the women lent a hand?"' 'Doin' pretty well fur a dumb lady!' 'Would you have women magistrates?' She was stumped by the suddenness of the query.