Pamela Gwatkin, or, as the girls called her, Newnham Assurance, was the Leader of the House, and Annabel Crewe Secretary for the Colonies, and Capability Stubbs had been unanimously elected Chancellor of the Exchequer; every girl that was worth anything had a place in the Cabinet. Lucy hadn't much interest in the business that was going on, and she took out her knitting and turned the heel of a sock while the great affairs of the State were being discussed. It was quite clear from what she did gather from the speeches on the Ministerial side that the country had been misgoverned long enough by the feeble race of men. It was quite time there was a change. A great deal of time had been lost; ages had been lost in the history of the world. Men had been first in the field; women took a longer time to ripen. They had ripened now; they were quite, quite ripe; they were ready for the change. Oh, it was beautiful to hear the girls speak! There is an idea among narrow-minded people that debating societies encourage volubility of speech. Perhaps they do among men, and the practice of public speaking is apt to make them too loquacious, too apt to air their elementary knowledge and crude information in senseless verbiage. But garrulity is not the sin of the students of colleges for women. They not only know a great deal more than men know, but they have the delightful gift of ready and accurate language. They do not haggle and hesitate, and 'H'm' and 'Ah,' and have that dreadful difficulty in finding words that even prevails in a real House of Commons. It was remarkable to see with what ease the Newnham girls handled those topics which old-fashioned legislators have been puzzling over Session after Session. There was a certain fine breadth in their way of handling them that would have taken a Conservative Leader's (the Leader of a real House of Commons) breath away. It didn't take anybody's breath away in the Ladies' Parliament. Everybody knitted and listened unmoved, and when eleven o'clock came two very important Bills that had been brought forward from last Session were advanced a stage. There was an exciting division before the House separated, that resulted in an overwhelming majority for the motion, 'That the Legal Profession and the Church be thrown open to women.' That foolish little Lucy voted in the minority; there were not a dozen girls in Newnham who showed such a poor spirit, and of these five, it was rumoured, were engaged to curates. The girls ran off to their rooms when the sitting of the House was ended in the highest possible spirits. Some of them sang snatches of songs, and some caught each other round the waist and waltzed madly down corridors. The thing was practically settled. The Bar and the Church opened vistas, immense vistas, for every sort of talent, and especially for the kind of talent that Newnham produced.