“So this is our new recruit,” she said. “She is come to bring healing to the sad, sick world—to right all the old, old wrongs.” “Did you ever see her act?” asked Joan.!

“A Labourer, together with man, according to Saint Paul,” Joan answered. “Go away. I’se looking at myself,” had explained Joan, struggling furiously to regain the glass.

There had been whispered talk among the men, and when she rose the one who had first spoken to her came forward. He was nervous and stood stiffly. She reached home in the evening. The Phillips’s old rooms had been twice let since Christmas, but were now again empty. The McKean with his silent ways and his everlasting pipe had gone to America to superintend the production of one of his plays. The house gave her the feeling of being haunted. She had her dinner brought up to her and prepared for a long evening’s work; but found herself unable to think—except on the one subject that she wanted to put off thinking about. To her relief the last post brought her a letter from Arthur. He had been called to Lisbon to look after a contract, and would be away for a fortnight. Her father was not as well as he had been. He threw aside the letter. “I’ll tell you what I want you to do,” he said. “It’s nothing to object to. Tell him that you’ve seen me and had a talk. I understand his scheme to be that the country should grow more and more food until it eventually becomes self-supporting; and that the Government should control the distribution. Tell him that with that I’m heart and soul in sympathy; and would like to help him.” He pushed aside a pile of papers and, leaning across the desk, spoke with studied deliberation. “If he can see his way to making his policy dependent upon Protection, we can work together.”