rally round. The policeman pulled at his moustache, and smiled gently, but that was as far as he seemed inclined to go; and old Bittlesham came back to me, puffing not a little.
“It’s monstrous! The man definitely threatens my personal safety, and that policeman declines to interfere. Said it was just talk. Talk! It’s monstrous!”
“Absolutely,” I said, but I can’t say it seemed to cheer him up much.
Comrade Butt had taken the centre of the stage now. He had a voice like the Last Trump, and you could hear every word he said, but somehow he didn’t seem to be clicking.
I suppose the fact was he was too impersonal, if that’s the word I want. After Bingo’s speech the audience was in the mood for something a good deal snappier than just general remarks about the Cause.
They had started to heckle the poor blighter pretty freely when he stopped in the middle of a sentence, and I saw that he was staring at old Bittlesham.
The crowd thought he had dried up.
“Suck a lozenge,” shouted someone.
Comrade Butt pulled himself together with a jerk, and even from where I stood I could see the nasty gleam in his eye.
“Ah,” he yelled, “you may mock, comrades; you may jeer and sneer; and you may scoff; but let me tell you that the movement is spreading every day and every hour. Yes, even amongst the so-called upper classes it’s spreading. Perhaps you’ll believe me when I tell you that here, today, on