Joan expressed her thanks. She would like to have had more talk with the stern old lady, but was prevented by the entrance of two new comers. The first was Miss Lavery, a handsome, loud-toned young woman. She ran a nursing paper, but her chief interest was in the woman’s suffrage question, just then coming rapidly to the front. She had heard Joan speak at Cambridge and was eager to secure her adherence, being wishful to surround herself with a group of young and good-looking women who should take the movement out of the hands of the “frumps,” as she termed them. Her doubt was whether Joan would prove sufficiently tractable. She intended to offer her remunerative work upon the Nursing News without saying anything about the real motive behind, trusting to gratitude to make her task the easier. Of course it was unreasonable. The sign-post may remain embedded in weeds: it notwithstanding points the way to the fair city. She told herself this, but it left her still short-tempered. She didn’t care which way it pointed. She didn’t believe there was any fair city.!

“I’m not so sure that it isn’t,” he laughed. “It’s the dinner-table that rules in England. We settle everything round a dinner-table.” They would not let less loving hands come near her.

“Bit of bad luck for both of us,” suggested Mr. Halliday. “Enough for the two of them?” demanded Mr. Singleton. “Because he will want them. Now think before you speak.” “We’re a pack of hirelings,” asserted the fiery little woman. “Our pens are for sale to the highest bidder. I had a letter from Jocelyn only two days ago. He was one of the original staff of the Socialist. He writes me that he has gone as leader writer to a Conservative paper at twice his former salary. Expected me to congratulate him.”