her daughter was a son.

"We had a great press of business and I had to stay," said Ellen with
masculine nonchalance. "A most interesting client came in...."




CHAPTER II

I


Every Saturday afternoon Ellen sold _Votes for Women_ in Princes Street,
and the next day found her as usual with a purple, white and green
poster hung from her waist and a bundle of papers tucked under her arm.
This street-selling had always been a martyrdom to her proud spirit, for
it was one of the least of her demands upon the universe that she should
be well thought of eternally and by everyone; but she had hitherto been
sustained by the reflection that while there were women in jail, as
there were always in those days, it ill became her to mind because Lady
Cumnock (and everyone knew what she was, for all that she opened so many
bazaars) laughed down her long nose as she went by. But now Ellen had
lost all her moral stiffening, and as that had always been her specialty
she was distressed by the lack; she felt like a dress-shirt that a
careless washerwoman had forgotten to starch. The giggling of the
passers-by and the manifest unpopularity of her opinions pricked her to
tears, and she mournfully perceived that she had ceased to be a poet.
For that the day was given over to a high melancholy of grey clouds,
which did not let the least stain of weak autumn sunlight discolour the