call, 'All get off--car's on fire!' Instead, however, of rushing out in a
panic, the passengers stolidly reply: 'Get on--get on! We're not coming
out. We're stopping where we are. Push on, George.' So till flames
actually appear.

The reason for this reluctance to dismount is that the nights are
howlingly cold, black, and windswept, and a car is a haven of refuge.
From village to village the miners travel, for a change of cinema, of
girl, of pub. The trams are desperately packed. Who is going to risk
himself in the black gulf outside, to wait perhaps an hour for another
tram, then to see the forlorn notice 'Depot Only', because there is
something wrong! Or to greet a unit of three bright cars all so tight
with people that they sail past with a howl of derision. Trams that pass
in the night.

This, the most dangerous tram-service in England, as the authorities
themselves declare, with pride, is entirely conducted by girls, and
driven by rash young men, a little crippled, or by delicate young men,
who creep forward in terror. The girls are fearless young hussies. In
their ugly blue uniform, skirts up to their knees, shapeless old
peaked caps on their heads, they have all the _sang-froid_ of an old
non-commissioned officer. With a tram packed with howling colliers,
roaring hymns downstairs and a sort of antiphony of obscenities upstairs,
the lasses are perfectly at their ease. They pounce on the youths who try
to evade their ticket-machine. They push off the men at the end of their
distance. They are not going to be done in the eye--not they. They fear
nobody--and everybody fears them.

'Hello, Annie!'