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 it tickled me so, heverythink startin’ again so fresh; but now ’tis autumn with my years, ’tis the ripenin’ season seems to be my crave, an’ the ripe old ways. Queer new ones they got ’ere, some of ’em—too hindependent by ’arf, to my thinkin’. I like to look up to my betters, I do, for my own self-respeck; betters as is betters, I mean; in course they ain’t alwus such—there’s some at ’Ome I could name,” she added reflectively. “An’ I must say I do like the way, out ’ere, the men ’ll let the women ’ave their share o’ the say without a-shuttin’ of ’em up an’ a-puttin’ of em’ down as if the Lord ’ad packed all the sense there is inside the men’s ’eads—which dear knows ’E ain’t! Yet they carries it altogether too far, so they do. Why, only yestiday there was a man come round—a man, mind you!—a-wantin’ me to put my name down so as I could vote. Vote? Me? Lor’ bless the man! I ain’t no sufferingette, an’ so I hups an’ tells ’im. ’Ow fractious they been gettin’ at ’Ome again, ain’t they, them sufferingettes?”

“Which kind o’ jet’s that, dear?” asked Mrs. Stone. “I got a brooch real Whitby.”

“No, no! What! ain’t you never ’eard tell o’ the sufferingettes—them women as wants to go an’ vote in Parlymint, same as the men?” explained Mrs. Nye.

“Oh! The bold ’ussies! The ’aughty faggits!” said the old lady, much shocked.

“Vote, indeed!” Mrs. Nye went on contemptuously. “‘My mother never ’ad no vote, an’ she was as good a woman as hever lived,’ I says to ’im, ‘so what do I want one for?’ says I.”

“An’ that’s just what I says to the sewin’ machine