“We must stir the people up about this food business,” he said, plunging at once into his subject. “Phillips is quite right. It overshadows everything. We must make the country self-supporting. It can be done and must. If a war were to be sprung upon us we could be starved out in a month. Our navy, in face of these new submarines, is no longer able to secure us. France is working day and night upon them. It may be a bogey, or it may not. If it isn’t, she would have us at her mercy; and it’s too big a risk to run. You live in the same house with him, don’t you? Do you often see him?” “Nothing better could have happened,” she was of opinion. “It means that their hearts are in it.”!

“I wonder,” he said. “You could hardly be your mother’s daughter without it.” “Yes,” he answered. “One lives by habit.”

“Tell me,” he said, “did you see your mother before she died. Did she speak to you?” A fear was creeping over her. “Why have you come back?” she asked. Behind her drawn-down lids, she offered up a little prayer that she might always be worthy of his homage. She didn’t know it would make no difference to him.