“They’d do what they like, anyway,” she began once more.  “One of our girls was in the union the Melbourne waitresses started.  They had a strike at one of the big restaurants over the manager insulting one of the girls.  They complained to the boss and wanted the manager to apologise, but the boss wouldn’t listen and said they were getting very nice.  So at dinner time, when the bell rang, they all marched off and put on their hats.  The customers were all waiting for dinner and the girls were all on strike and the boss nearly went mad.  He was going to have them all arrested, but when the gentlemen heard what it was about they said the girls were right and if the manager didn’t apologise they’d go to some other restaurant always.  So the manager went to the girl and apologised.”

“By gum!” interjected Ned.  “Those girls were hummers.”

“I suppose the boss victimised afterwards?” asked Nellie, wiser in such matters.

“That’s just it,” said the girl, in a disheartened tone.  “In two or three weeks every girl who’d had anything to do with stirring the others up was bounced for something or other.  The manager did what he liked afterwards.”

“Just talk to the other girls about a union, will you?” asked Nellie.  “It’s no use giving right in, you know.”

“I’ll see what some of them say, but there’s a lot I wouldn’t open my mouth to,” answered the waitress.

“What time do you get away on Thursdays?”

“Next Thursday I’m on till half-past ten.”

“Well, I’ll meet you then, outside, to see what they say,” said Nellie.  “My name’s Nellie Lawton and some of us are trying to start a women’s union.  You’ll be sure to be there?”

“All right,” answered the waitress, a little dubiously.  Then she added more cordially, as she wrote out the pay ticket: 

“My name’s Susan Finch.  I’ll see what I can do.”

So Ned and Nellie got up and, the former having paid at the counter, walked out into the street together.  It was nearly three.  The rain had stopped, though the sky was still cloudy and threatening.  The damp afternoon was chilly after the sultry broiling morning.  Neither of them felt in the mood for walking so at Nellie’s suggestion they put in the afternoon in riding, on trams and ’busses, hither and thither through the mazy wilderness of the streets that make up Sydney.

Intuitively, both avoided talking of the topics that before had engaged them and that still engrossed their thoughts.  For a while they chatted on indifferent matters, but gradually relapsed into silence, rarely broken.  The impression of the morning walk, of Mrs. Somerville’s poor room, of Nellie’s stuffy street, came with full force to Ned’s mind.  What he saw only stamped it deeper and deeper.