“No, we don’t,” she said, “not those of us who think. We know we shall never oust man from his place. He will always be the greater. We want to help him; that’s all.” He did not think the candidature need be confined to Dukes, though he had no objection to a worthy Duke. He meant any really great man who would help her and whom she could help.!

Madge thought that England, in particular, had been too much given up to luxury and pleasure. There had been too much idleness and empty laughter: Hitchicoo dances and women undressing themselves upon the stage. Even the working classes seemed to think of nothing else but cinemas and beer. She dreamed of a United Kingdom purified by suffering, cleansed by tears; its people drawn together by memory of common sacrifice; class antagonism buried in the grave where Duke’s son and cook’s son would lie side by side: of a new-born Europe rising from the ashes of the old. With Germany beaten, her lust of war burnt out, her hideous doctrine of Force proved to be false, the world would breathe a freer air. Passion and hatred would fall from man’s eyes. The people would see one another and join hands. “I’ve no quarrel with the rich,” he said. “I don’t care how many rich men there are, so long as there are no poor. Who does? I was riding on a bus the other day, and there was a man beside me with a bandaged head. He’d been hurt in that railway smash at Morpeth. He hadn’t claimed damages from the railway company and wasn’t going to. ‘Oh, it’s only a few scratches,’ he said. ‘They’ll be hit hard enough as it is.’ If he’d been a poor devil on eighteen shillings a week it would have been different. He was an engineer earning good wages; so he wasn’t feeling sore and bitter against half the world. Suppose you tried to run an army with your men half starved while your officers had more than they could eat. It’s been tried and what’s been the result? See that your soldiers have their proper rations, and the General can sit down to his six-course dinner, if he will. They are not begrudging it to him.

“And don’t you take any notice of me,” further explained the good woman, “when I seem to be in opposition, like. I chip in now and then on purpose, just to keep the ball rolling. It stirs him up, a bit of contradictoriness. You have to live with a man before you understand him.” A message came for Mary about ten o’clock, brought by a scared little girl, who whispered it to her at the door. Mary apologized. She had to go out. The party broke up. Mary disappeared into the next room and returned in a shawl and bonnet, carrying a small brown paper parcel. Joan walked with her as far as the King’s Road. Joan stopped. “Why, it’s the house you are always talking about,” she said. “Are you thinking of taking it?”