The little handmaid bubbled over with willing talk. Oh, yes, there was a
meeting up Manx Road, and her Ladyship had gone with Lord Naseby, and
Lady Madeleine, and Mr. Everard, the inspector, and, she thought, one or
two besides. She expected the ladies back about ten, and they were to
stay the night.

"An they do say, sir," she said eagerly, looking up at Watton, whom she
knew, "as there'll be a lot o' rough people at the meetin."

"Oh! I daresay," said Watton. "Well, we're going up, too, to look
after her."

As they walked on they talked over the general situation in the district,
and Watton explained what he knew of this particular meeting. In the
first place, he repeated, he could not see that Lady Maxwell understood
as yet the sort of opposition that the Bill was rousing, especially in
these East End districts. The middle-class and parliamentary resistance
she had always appreciated; but the sort of rage that might be awakened
among a degraded class of workers by proposals that seemed to threaten
their immediate means of living, he believed she had not yet realised, in
anything like its full measure and degree. And he feared that this
meeting might be a disagreeable experience.

For it was the direct fruit of an agitation that, as Tressady knew, was
in particular Fontenoy's agitation. The Free Workers' League, which had
called upon the trade-unionist of Mile End to summon the meeting, and to
hear therein what both sides had to say, was, in fact, Fontenoy's
creation. It had succeeded especially in organising the women
home-workers of Mile End and Poplar. Two or three lady-speakers employed