Page:Women Wanted.djvu/315

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AT THE GATES OF GOVERNMENT
287

bus marked "Woolwich Special" drew up at the Haymarket curb to take on a load of women munition workers going out for the night shift at the great arsenal. High on a ladder against a building here in Cockspur Street, two girl window cleaners stand at work in tunic and trousers. Girl footmen are opening the doors of carriages before the fashionable shops of Oxford Street. Girl operators are running the lifts. Girl messengers in government uniform are going in and out of Whitehall.

A kingdom is in the hands of its women. Round and round the world has turned since yesterday.

Here in Trafalgar Square a crowd of a thousand people hang on the words that a woman is speaking. Jones had never heard Mrs. Pankhurst; he had forbidden his wife to when she came to their town. Rampant, women's rights females were against the laws of God and England. This, the arch conspirator of them all, he pictured in his mind's eye as permanently occupied in burning country residences and bombing cathedrals and engaging in hand to hand conflicts with the London police.

Now wouldn't it take your breath away? Here she was doing nothing at all of the kind. A very well gowned lady stood directly between the British lions, her slender figure outlined against the statue of Nelson. Her clear, ringing tones carried over the listening throng to Jones and his comrades in the Women's Reserve Ambulance car. One small hand frequently came down into the palm of the other in the emphatic gesture that in times past brought two