Rebel women

while the

t there by a puzzled Government, the wardress who led me across the e

in summer," she

without realizing how many there are of us who go through the world snatching desperately at the air for some of the colour of life. I think my wardress-guide would scarcely have burst out with her involuntary remark had not some one come in from the outside to re

days that even London smoke cannot succeed in dimming. The brilliance of it had touched the official soul of the constable who guarded the door;

Well, well, I can't say what might happen presently if you care to wait on the chance. Those under remand only. Yes, yes, to be sure! If you were let out on bail the previous evening, you're under remand; but you're not a prisoner yet,

ore the air of a man who felt that his natural prerogative as a frequenter of police courts was being infringed. Certainly the constable who guarded the door took far less interest in him than in the ladies

ide, confronted by more constables and an inspector. They were all smiling. She d

oss an empty ante-room that seemed unnecessarily large, into a crowded court that was certainly unnecessarily

l the things that matter, was strangely at war with the accepted notion of the publicity of British justice. The British public was there, it is true-a dozen strong, perhaps, v

e mixed up the charge sheets. But the British public, jammed together on the one bench reserved for it, could only gather occasionally why this or that person was fined or sent to prison or remanded. One thing could be clearly deduced from the progress of that heart-breaking procession

e boy, whose eyes were swollen with crying, to be so unmanageable that his father had to bring him to a place where no child should be, at an age when, in happier circumstances, he would be just starting for Eton with a prospect before him of unlimited opportunities for "ragging."[A] The magistrate was not unkind; nobody was unkind. All the prisoners were scrupulously asked if they had anything to say, if they would like to call a w

half light. There was the same feeling in it of spectral unreality. You knew even more certainly than before that the machinery of the little judgment hall was entirely inadequate to deal with the prisoners in the dock. But the hopelessness of the whole thing was gone. These were not people whose spirit had been driven out of them by monotony an

een the dreary convictions it had just witnessed, between the clumsy if kindly handling of habitual offenders, and this passage through the dock of imperturbably serene young women who, by the grace of G

d only be answered outside the police court, and then, perhaps, only once in a hundred years or so. And ther

soners who yet felt their cases to be prejudged. Then, as the woman in the dock showed every indication of having a great deal to say

ckered elusive beyond the grasp of all of us, as thirteen more offenders,