“It may have been,” he answered carelessly, “though the gulf was wider then than it is now. I’ll try and think. Perhaps it is only your fancy.” Madge had asked Joan to come a little earlier so that they could have a chat together before the others arrived.!

“Couldn’t you have saved a bit, Daddy?” she asked, “of all that wealth of youth—just enough to live on?” Joan did not answer. There seemed no words that would come.

They discussed life on two thousand a year; the problems it would present; and Mrs. Phillips became more cheerful. Joan laid herself out to be friendly. She hoped to establish an influence over Mrs. Phillips that should be for the poor lady’s good; and, as she felt instinctively, for poor Phillips’s also. It was not an unpleasing face. Underneath the paint, it was kind and womanly. Joan was sure he would like it better clean. A few months’ attention to diet would make a decent figure of her and improve her wind. Joan watched her spreading the butter a quarter of an inch thick upon her toast and restrained with difficulty the impulse to take it away from her. And her clothes! Joan had seen guys carried through the streets on the fifth of November that were less obtrusive. She told Joan what she remembered herself of 1870. She had turned her country house into a hospital and had seen a good deal of the fighting. “Don’t be so harsh with me,” pleaded Joan meekly. “I’m trying to think. Yes,” she continued, “decidedly he’s got brains.”