“Tell me,” said Joan. “What was my mother like? I can only remember her as more or less of an invalid.” “You’ll be the last of the name,” he said. “Something tells me that. I’m glad you’re a fighter. I always prayed my child might be a fighter.”!

“But perhaps you’ve changed your mind,” he said. “It isn’t quite as pretty as it’s painted.” “So did Archimedes disappear,” he answered with a smile. “The nameless Roman soldier remained. That was hardly the survival of the fittest.”

“This young man of yours,” he asked, “what is he like?” “Oh, just enough to be of no use,” Mary answered. “Carleton was rather decent, so far as that part of it was concerned, and insisted on paying him a fair price. The market value would have been much less; and he wanted to be out of it.” And then during college vacations, returning home with growing notions and views of her own, she had found herself so often in antagonism with him. His fierce puritanism, so opposed to all her enthusiasms. Arguing with him, she might almost have been listening to one of his Cromwellian ancestors risen from the dead. There had been disputes between him and his work-people, and Joan had taken the side of the men. He had not been angry with her, but coldly contemptuous. And yet, in spite of it all, if he had only made a sign! She wanted to fling herself crying into his arms and shake him—make him listen to her wisdom, sitting on his knee with her hands clasped round his neck. He was not really intolerant and stupid. That had been proved by his letting her go to a Church of England school. Her mother had expressed no wish. It was he who had selected it.