Mary hoped that Joan was hungry. Joan laughed and admitted that she was. “It’s the smell of all the nice things,” she explained. Mary promised it should soon be ready, and went back to her corner. The right people did come: Mrs. Denton being a personage that a landed gentry, rendered jumpy by the perpetual explosion of new ideas under their very feet, and casting about eagerly for friends, could not afford to snub. A kindly, simple folk, quite intelligent, some of them, as Phillips had surmised. Mrs. Denton made no mystery of why she had invited them. Why should all questions be left to the politicians and the journalists? Why should not the people interested take a hand; meet and talk over these little matters with quiet voices and attentive ears, amid surroundings where the unwritten law would restrain ladies and gentlemen from addressing other ladies and gentlemen as blood-suckers or anarchists, as grinders of the faces of the poor or as oily-tongued rogues; arguments not really conducive to mutual understanding and the bridging over of differences. The latest Russian dancer, the last new musical revue, the marvellous things that can happen at golf, the curious hands that one picks up at bridge, the eternal fox, the sacred bird! Excellent material for nine-tenths of our conversation. But the remaining tenth? Would it be such excruciatingly bad form for us to be intelligent, occasionally; say, on one or two Fridays during the season? Mrs. Denton wrapped it up tactfully; but that was her daring suggestion.!

“No. Not since about a month,” she answered. “Why?” “I felt a bit afraid of her,” laughed Joan, “so I made her promise not to part with it. Is he really very ill, her husband?”

She laughed. But the next moment she was serious. “I was so afraid you would not be back before I went,” said the child. “I ought to have gone this afternoon, but Papa let me stay till the evening.” “A Labourer, together with man, according to Saint Paul,” Joan answered.