76 STRAY -AW AYS 



at present, yet the organisers of our party — a party 

 that, hke all others in those days, would have become 

 hysterical at the suggestion of allowing us to vote — 

 had no scruples in despatching us and our playfellow^s 

 to instruct elderly professional gentlemen upon the 

 affairs of the nation. 



The heat of a peculiarly gorgeous July was prisoned 

 in those snug and stereotyped sitting-rooms, it stood 

 in beads on the bald pates of our pupils, and the flush 

 of battle deepened from hour to hour in our cheeks, 

 till it became more and more difficult to present our 

 case with calm to the opponent. The consciousness 

 of a Bacchanalian complexion outweighs the confi- 

 dence in a good cause, especially when the opponent 

 is, as in that campaign he frequently was, a dissenting 

 minister with cheeks of ascetic pallor. Somewhere in 

 the afternoon, when ranging in the outer suburbs, a 

 small shed with the opposition yellow label presented 

 itself to us ; from within came the tapping of a shoe- 

 maker's hammer, the door stood ajar, and revealed a 

 slouched hat and a sardonic nose and long, curving 

 lips beneath its shadow. The situation was difficult 

 but attractive. We took up our parable with a new 

 zest, and the lips of the auditor stretched into a smile 

 of cynicism and superiority, as by clockwork the first 

 row of nails went into their places in the huge sole; 

 to the ceaseless tune of the hammer the burden of our 

 mission was rehearsed, and still the shoemaker smiled 

 to himself. He looked like a gipsy, he hstened like 

 Mephistopheles, and he worked like a machine. AVe 

 went away and left him still liammering and smiling 

 malevolently. It was the last of those strenuous 

 unchaperoned days of canvassing. On the morrow 

 the voters would go to the polling-booths, and we and 

 our fellow-instructresses were requested to betake 

 ourselves to the Woman's Kingdom, our respective 



