“Yes, sir, my husband, sir,” she replied as she grasped the cable.  She gave it a pull, and added “—­or he was, sir.  He’s home now, sir!”

“On leave?”

“O no, sir, he’s wounded, sir—­he lost his left arm at the shoulder, sir, and he’s going down to Roehampton today, sir, to see if they can teach him some kind of a trade there, sir,” answered the woman.

The wonders of Roehampton where they re-educate the cripples of war and turn them out equipped with such trades as their maimed bodies may acquire had been displayed for Henry and me the day before.

“Tell him to try typewriting and stenography, one armed men are doing wonders with that down at Roehampton.  Any children?”

“Two, sir,” she answered as the elevator approached the mezzanine floor, “three and five, sir!”

“Three and five—­well, well, isn’t that fine!  Aren’t you lucky!  Tell him to try that stenography; that will put him in an office and he’ll have a fine chance to rise there.  You must give them an education—­a good one; send them to College.  If they’re going to get on in this new world they will need every ounce of education you can stuff into them.  But it will be a splendid thing for both of you working for that.  Is education expensive in England?”

“Very, sir.  I hardly see how we can do it, sir!”

“That’s too bad—­now in our country education, from the primer to the university, is absolutely free.  The state does the whole business and in my state they print the school books, and more than that they give a man a professional education, too, without tuition fees—­if he wants to become a lawyer or a doctor or an engineer or a chemist or a school teacher!”

“Is that so, sir,” the cable was running through her hands as she spoke.  Then she added as the elevator passed the second floor, “If we could only have that here, sir.  If we only could, sir!”

“Well, it will come.  That’s the next revolution you want to start when you women get the ballot.  Abolish these class schools like Eton and Harrow and put the money into better board schools.  All the kids in my town, and in my state, and in my whole section of the country go to the common schools.  Children should start life as equals.  There is no snobbery so cruel as the snobbery that marks off childhood into classes!  When you women vote here, the first thing to do is to smash that nonsense.  But in the meantime keep the kids in school.”

“We’ve talked that all over,” she answered.  “And we’re certainly going to try.  He’ll have his pension, and I’ll have this job and he’ll learn a trade and I think we can manage, sir!” The “sir” came belated.

“Go to it, sister, and luck to you,” cried her passenger as he rose from his bench.  The car was nearing the fourth floor.

“We shall,” she answered; “no fear of that.”  She stopped the car, and they smiled as friends as she let him out of the door.  “Well—­good morning,” she said as he turned down the corridor.  The “sir” had left entirely when they reached the fourth floor.  And all the women of Europe, excepting perhaps those still behind the harem curtains in Turkey and Germany of whom we know nothing, are dropping the servile “sir” and are emerging into life at the fourth floor as human beings.