“What are you going to do when it’s over?” he asked her. “You won’t give up the fight, will you, whatever happens?” She had not known till then that he had been taking any interest in her work. “I’m afraid you haven’t yet grasped the power of the Press,” he answered with a smile. “Phillips speaks occasionally to five thousand people. Carleton addresses every day a circle of five million readers.”!

“I fancy that’s the idea,” said Joan. “What will you do if you fail? Go back to China?” He wrote her two days later from Ayr, giving her the name of his regiment, and again some six months later from Flanders. But there would have been no sense in her replying to that last.

She remembered a Sunday class she had once conducted; and how for a long time she had tried in vain to get the children to “come in,” to take a hand. That she might get in touch with them, understand their small problems, she had urged them to ask questions. And there had fallen such long silences. Until, at last, one cheeky ragamuffin had piped out: He rose and held out his hand. “We will fight him,” he said. “And you can tell him this, if he asks, that I’m going straight for him. Parliament may as well close down if a few men between them are to be allowed to own the entire Press of the country, and stifle every voice that does not shout their bidding. We haven’t dethroned kings to put up a newspaper Boss. He shall have all the fighting he wants.” It was a frightened face that looked at her out of the glass, as she stood before it taking off her hat.