The next speaker was a working woman, the significance of whose appearance in that place and in that company was so little apprehended by the two ladies in the crowd that they agreed in laughingly commiserating the chairman for not having more of her own kind to back her up in her absurd contention. Though the second speaker merely bored the two who, having no key either to her pathos or her power, saw nothing but 'low cockney effrontery' in her effort, she nevertheless had a distinct success with the crowd. Here was somebody speaking their own language--they paid her the tribute of their loudest hoots mixed with applause. She never lost her hold on them until the appearance on the plinth of a grave, rugged, middle-aged man in a soft hat. 'That's 'im!' 'Yes. Lothian Scott!' Small need for the chairwoman to introduce the grey man with the northern burr in his speech, and the northern turn for the uncompromising in opinion. Every soul there save the two 'educated' ladies knew this was the man who had done more to make the Labour Party a political force to be reckoned with than any other creature in the three kingdoms. Whether he was conscious of having friends in a gathering largely Tory (as lower-class crowds still are), certainly he did not spare his enemies. During the first few minutes of a speech full of Socialism, Mrs. Fox-Moore (stirred to unheard-of expressiveness) kept up a low, running comment-- 'Oh, of _course_! He says that to curry favour with the mob--a rank demagogue, this man! Such pandering to the populace!' Then, turning sharply to her companion, '_He wants votes!_' she said, as though detecting in him a taste unknown among the men in her purer circle. 'Oh, no doubt he makes a very good thing out of it! Going about filling the people's heads with revolutionary ideas! Monstrous wickedness, _I_ call it, stirring up class against class! I begin to wonder what the police are thinking about.' She looked round uneasily. The excitement had certainly increased as the little grey politician denounced the witlessness of the working-class, and when they howled at him, went on to expound a trenchant doctrine of universal Responsibility, which preceded the universal Suffrage that was to come. Much of what he said was drowned in uproar. It had become clear that his opinions revolted the majority of his hearers even more than they did the two ladies. So outraged were the sensibilities of the hooligan and the half-drunk that they drowned as much of the speech as they were able in cat-calls and jeers. But enough still penetrated to ears polite not only to horrify, but to astonish them--such force has the spoken word above even its exaggeration in cold print. The ladies had read--sparingly, it is true--that these things were said, but to _hear_ them! 'He doesn't, after all, seem to be saying what the mob wants to hear,' said the younger woman. 'No; mercifully the heart of the country is still sound!'