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Macann was actually fumbling with the button of the door. Quick as thought then she seized a hassock, sprang on it, and, reaching over the partition, pressed a hand down on his chestnut wig. "Sit still sit still, man!" she commanded. "Thee'rt throwing helve after hatchet, I tell 'ee. What's a stomach-ache, after all?" "I don't follow you, Mrs. Lebow," said the Doctor: and small blame to him.
He persuaded the Overseers to make a return to the writ certifying they had obeyed it to the best of their skill and conscience, and drawn up a new list: which list they posted a fortnight later, and only seven days as it turned out before Parliament dissolved: and will you believe it, but the only difference between it and the old one was that they'd added the name of Christiana Lebow, widow who, being a woman, hadn't a vote at all!
This Kitty, or Christian, or Christiana Lebow was by birth a Bottrell: and a finer family than the Bottrells, by their own account, you wouldn't find in all England. Not that it matters whether they came over with William the Norman, nor whether they could once on a time ride from sea to sea on their own acres.
"That's enough of big words," said a voice, very quiet, but so that all had to listen: and behold, there was Kitty Lebow mounting the steps, as cool as cream in a dairy. She landed on the platform and took a glance about her, and the folk read in her eye that she had come to enjoy herself.
Couldn't we start early to-day, and pay Mrs. Lebow a visit on our way to church?" "You won't get no comfort out of calling," said the Squire: "but let it be as you please." She wasn't going to lower her colours, of course. But down she went in her blue and gold, opened the door, and curtseyed.
"I'll vote, if you please, for Mrs. Lebow," said more than one of them, "if you'll tell me which side she's for." And I suppose that gave Newte his chance. At any rate, he returned Lord William and Major Dyngwall as polling 85 and 127 against Dr. Macann 42 and Mr. Saule 36. And so Miss Lally became a Member of Parliament's wife and rode in her coach.
Why, there was a woman here once that never asked for a vote in her life, and yet capsized an Election for Parliament candidates, voters, and the whole apple-cart as easy as you might turn over a plate. Did you ever hear tell of Kitty Lebow and her eight tall daughters? No; I daresay not. The world's old and losing its memory when it begins to talk of Woman Suffrage.
And out of the common they were Kit Lebow with her eight daughters, all wafting up the street like a bevy of peacocks in their best hoops and bonnets: Kit herself sailing afore, with her long malacca staff tap-tapping the cobbles, and her tall daughters behind like a bodyguard two and two Maria, Constantia, Elizabeth Jane, Perilla, Christian the Younger, Marcella, Thomasine, and Lally.
"She's just an eccentric body, my Lord," said he; "and, I'm sorry to say, a violent enemy to your Lordship's cause." "Hoity-me-toity!" says Kitty. "I'm Christian Lebow, that used to be Bottrell: which means that your forefathers and mine, my Lord, came over to England together, like the Macanns and the Martins, though maybe some time before, and not in a cattle-boat.
At any rate, Lord William smiled and bowed, and said he, "The Major and I will certainly do ourselves the pleasure of calling and tasting your ale, Mrs. Lebow." "The recipe is three hundred years old," said Kitty, and swept him a curtsey, the like of which for stateliness you don't see nowadays: it wants practice and sea-room.
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