“They must have felt sure you could act,” said Joan. “Next time it will be a clean offer.” “No,” Joan answered. “I was too late. She had died the night before. I hardly recognized her when I saw her. She looked so sweet and young.”!

Joan could not say. So much depended upon the general state of health. There was the case of her own father. Of course she would always be subject to attacks. But this one would have warned her to be careful. If only she could do something. She was sick of thinking.

“You will let me make one for you, dearie, won’t you?” she said. “I feel sure it will be a little Christ baby.” “He will be all right in his proper place,” he answered: “as the servant of the public: told what to do, and turned out of his job if he doesn’t do it. My scheme does depend upon Protection. You can tell him that. But this time, it’s going to be Protection for the people.” 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.