The effect was magical. Flossie still seemed troubled. She held on to Joan.!

“No, dear,” answered Mary. “It’s only one or two who have nowhere else to go.” “Woman’s right to follow the dictates of her own heart, uncontrolled by any law,” the Human Document was insisting: “That is one of the first things we must fight for.”

“One can never be sure of a woman,” he answered. “And it would have been so difficult. There was a girl down in Scotland, one of the village girls. It wasn’t anything really. We had just been children together. But they all thought I had gone away to make my fortune so as to come back and marry her—even my mother. It would have looked so mean if after getting on I had married a fine London lady. I could never have gone home again.” She would write books. She would choose for her heroine a woman of the people. How full of drama, of tragedy must be their stories: their problems the grim realities of life, not only its mere sentimental embroideries. The daily struggle for bare existence, the ever-shadowing menace of unemployment, of illness, leaving them helpless amid the grinding forces crushing them down on every side. The ceaseless need for courage, for cunning. For in the kingdom of the poor the tyrant and the oppressor still sit in the high places, the robber still rides fearless. “No,” answered Joan. “But my mother was. Are you?”