“It isn’t going to be the Daily This and the Daily That and the Weekly the Other all combined to down me. I’m going to tell the people that it’s Carleton and only Carleton—Carleton here, Carleton there, Carleton everywhere, against them. I’m going to drag him out into the open and make him put up his own fists.” She reached for her jacket; and the waiter sprang forward and helped her on with it, prolonging the business needlessly. She wished him “Good evening” in a tone of distant hauteur, and led the way to the door. Outside the street was dim and silent. Joan held out her hand.!

She met Carleton by chance a day or two later, as she was entering the office. “I want to see you,” he said; and took her up with him into his room. “It doesn’t read quite the same,” he answered. “Phillips goes home under the impression that he has made a great success and has roused the country. He and millions of other readers learn from the next morning’s headlines that it was ‘A Tame Speech’ that he made. What sounded to him ‘Loud Cheers’ have sunk to mild ‘Hear, Hears.’ That five minutes’ hurricane of applause, during which wildly excited men and women leapt upon the benches and roared themselves hoarse, and which he felt had settled the whole question, he searches for in vain. A few silly interjections, probably pre-arranged by Carleton’s young lions, become ‘renewed interruptions.’ The report is strictly truthful; but the impression produced is that Robert Phillips has failed to carry even his own people with him. And then follow leaders in fourteen widely-circulated Dailies, stretching from the Clyde to the Severn, foretelling how Mr. Robert Phillips could regain his waning popularity by the simple process of adopting Tariff Reform: or whatever the pet panacea of Carleton and Co. may, at the moment, happen to be.”

Her father met her at Waterloo. He had business in London, and they stayed on for a few days. Reading between the lines of his later letters, she had felt that all was not well with him. His old heart trouble had come back; and she noticed that he walked to meet her very slowly. It would be all right, now that she had returned, he explained: he had been worrying himself about her. She walked with him to Euston and saw him into the train. He had given up his lodgings and was living with her father at The Pines. They were busy on a plan for securing the co-operation of the workmen, and she promised to run down and hear all about it. She would not change her mind about Birmingham, but sent everyone her love. She examined Joan awhile in silence. “Are you on the stage?” she asked.