“Yes,” he answered, laughing. “We are going to say to the people, ‘Eat, drink and be wise.’” “He will be pleased to find you here, waiting for him,” he said with a smile, handing her the letter. “He will be here some time to-morrow.”!

“I must try,” agreed Mrs. Phillips, looking up. “What sort of things ought I to talk to him about, do you think?” She paused with the door in her hand, and a faint smile played round the thin red lips.

At a corner where the trams and buses stopped she lingered for a while, watching the fierce struggle; the weak and aged being pushed back time after time, hardly seeming to even resent it, regarding it as in the natural order of things. It was so absurd, apart from the injustice, the brutality of it! The poor, fighting among themselves! She felt as once when watching a crowd of birds to whom she had thrown a handful of crumbs in winter time. As if they had not enemies enough: cats, weasels, rats, hawks, owls, the hunger and the cold. And added to all, they must needs make the struggle yet harder for one another: pecking at each other’s eyes, joining with one another to attack the fallen. These tired men, these weary women, pale-faced lads and girls, why did they not organize among themselves some system that would do away with this daily warfare of each against all. If only they could be got to grasp the fact that they were one family, bound together by suffering. Then, and not till then, would they be able to make their power felt? That would have to come first: the Esprit de Corps of the Poor. “What are you doing now?” asked Joan, in a low tone. “Wasting my time and money hanging about newspaper offices, listening to silly talk from old fossils,” she told him.