“It will give you greater freedom,” he had suggested with fine assumption of propounding a mere business proposition; “enabling you to choose your work entirely for its own sake. I have always wanted to take a hand in helping things on. It will come to just the same, your doing it for me.” “We ought to be comrades,” answered Joan, with a smile. “I, too, am trying to help the People.”!

“What do you think of him?” he said, without looking at her. “I’m afraid you don’t like him,” Joan commented.

“I always come prepared to these scrimmages,” she explained. “I’ve got some Hazeline in my bag. They haven’t kicked you, have they?” “What on earth induced Helen to bring that poor old Dutch doll along with her?” demanded Flossie. “The woman never opened her mouth all the time. Did she tell you?” In the day-time, when Arthur and her father were at the works, she would move through the high, square, stiffly-furnished rooms, or about the great formal garden, with its ordered walks and level lawns. And as with knowledge we come to love some old, stern face our childish eyes had thought forbidding, and would not have it changed, there came to her with the years a growing fondness for the old, plain brick-built house. Generations of Allways had lived and died there: men and women somewhat narrow, unsympathetic, a little hard of understanding; but at least earnest, sincere, seeking to do their duty in their solid, unimaginative way. Perhaps there were other ways besides those of speech and pen. Perhaps one did better, keeping to one’s own people; the very qualities that separated us from them being intended for their need. What mattered the colours, so that one followed the flag? Somewhere, all roads would meet.