neighbours and friends clapped her on the back as she passed, laughing
and urging her on. Then, presently, there she stood on the platform, a
thin, wand-like creature, with her battered bonnet sideways on her head,
a woollen crossover on her shoulders, in spite of July, her hands clasped
across her chest, her queer light eyes wandering and smiling hither and
thither. In her emaciation, her weird cheerfulness, she was like a figure
from a Dance of Death. But what was amazing was her self-possession.

"Now yer laffin' at me," she began in a conversational tone, nodding
towards the group of women she had just left. "You go 'long! I told the
lidy I'd speak, an I will. Well, they comes to me, an they ses, Mrs.
Dickson, yer not to work at 'ome no longer--they'll put yer in prison if
yer do't, they ses; yer to go out ter work, same as the shop 'ands, they
ses; and what's more, if they cotch Mr. Butterford--that's my landlord;
p'raps yer dunno 'im--"

She looked down at the meeting with a whimsical grin, her eyes screwed up
and her crooked brows lifted, so that the room roared merely to look at
her. The trim lady-secretary, however, bent forward with an air of
annoyance. She had not, perhaps, realised that Mrs. Dickson was so much
of a character.

"If they cotch Mr. Butterford, they'll make 'im pay up smart for lettin
yer do such a thing as make knickers in 'is 'ouse. So I asks the lidy,
Wot's ter become o' me an the little uns? An she says she done know, but
yer mus come and speak Tuesday night, she says--Manx Road Schools, she
says--if yer want to perwent em making a law ov it. Which I'm a doin
of--aint I?"

Fresh laughter and response from the room. She went on satisfied.