'No,' Vida helped her out with a laughing whisper; 'I agree she doesn't _look_ big enough or bad enough or old enough or bold enough to be the mother of young women renowned for their dreadfulness. But as soon as she opens her mouth no doubt we'll smell the brimstone. I wish she'd begin her raging. Why are they waiting?' 'It's only five minutes past,' said the lady with the literature. 'I think they're waiting for Mr. Lothian Scott. He's ill. But he'll come!' As though the example of his fidelity to the cause nerved her to more earnest prosecution of her own modest duty, she called out, 'Leaflets! Citizenship of Women, by Lothian Scott!' 'Wot do they give ye,' inquired a half-tipsy tramp, 'fur 'awkin' that rot about?' She turned away quite unruffled. 'Citizenship of Women, one penny.' 'I hope you _do_ get paid for so disagreeable a job--forgive my saying so,' said Vida. 'Paid? Oh, no!' she said cheerfully. 'I'm too hard at work all week to help much. And I can't speak, so I do this. Leaflets! Citizenship----' 'Is that pinched-looking creature at the end,'--Mrs. Fox-Moore detained the pamphlet-seller to point out a painfully thin, eager little figure sitting on the ledge of the plinth and looking down with anxious eyes at the crowd--'is that one of them?' 'Oh, yes. I thought everybody knew _her_. That's Miss Mary O'Brian.' She spoke the name with an accent of such protecting tenderness that Vida asked-- 'And who is Miss Mary O'Brian?' But the pamphlet-seller had descried a possible customer, and was gone. 'Mary O'Brian,' said a blear-eyed old man, 'is the one that's just come out o' quod.' 'Oh, thank you.' Then to her sister Vida whispered, 'What is quod?' But Mrs. Fox-Moore could only shake her head. Even when they heard the words these strange fellow-citizens used, meaning often failed to accompany sound. 'Oh, is _that_ Mary?' A rollicking young rough, with his hat on the extreme back of his head, began to sing, 'Molly Darling.' ''Ow'd yer like the skilly?' another shouted up at the girl. 'Skilly?' whispered Mrs. Fox-Moore. Vida in turn shook her head. It wasn't in the dictionary of any language she knew. But it seemed in some way to involve dishonour, for the chairman, who had been consulting with the man in grey, turned suddenly and faced the crowd. Her eyes were shining with the light of battle, but what she said in a peculiarly pleasant voice was-- 'Miss O'Brian has come here for the express purpose of telling you how she liked it.' 'Oh, she's going to tell us all about it. 'Ow _nice_!' But they let the thin little slip of a girl alone after that. It was a new-comer, a few moments later who called out from the fringe of the crowd-- 'I say, Mary, w'en yer get yer rights will y' be a perliceman?' Even the tall, grave guardians of the peace ranged about the monument, even they smiled at the suggested image.