lady interested in "the people," together with those few kind spirits in
charge of "the show"--marched too, a little self-conscious, desiring with
a vague military sensation to hold our heads up, but not too much, under
the eyes of the curious bystanders. These--nearly all men--were
well-wishers, it was said, though their faces, pale from their own work
in shop or furnace, expressed nothing but apathy. They wished well, very
dumbly, in the presence of this new thing, as if they found it queer that
women should be doing something for themselves; queer and rather
dangerous. A few, indeed, shuffled along between the column and the
little hopeless shops and grimy factory sheds, and one or two accompanied
their women, carrying the baby. Now and then there passed us some
better-to-do citizen-a housewife, or lawyer's clerk, or ironmonger, with
lips pressed rather tightly together and an air of taking no notice of
this disturbance of traffic, as though the whole thing were a rather poor
joke which they had already heard too often.

So, with laughter and a continual crack of voices our jay-like crew swung
on, swaying and thumping in the strange ecstasy of irreflection, happy to
be moving they knew not where, nor greatly why, under the visiting sun,
to the sound of murdered music. Whenever the band stopped playing,
discipline became as tatterdemalion as the very flags and garments; but
never once did they lose that look of essential order, as if indeed they
knew that, being the worst-served creatures in the Christian world, they
were the chief guardians of the inherent dignity of man.

Hatless, in the very front row, marched a tall slip of a girl,
arrow-straight, and so thin, with dirty fair hair, in a blouse and skirt
gaping behind, ever turning her pretty face on its pretty slim neck from
side to side, so that one could see her blue eyes sweeping here, there,
everywhere, with a sort of flower-like wildness, as if a secret embracing