Joan seated herself on one of the chairs ranged round the walls, and drew the girl down beside her. Through the closed door, the mingled voices of the Foreign Secretary’s guests sounded curiously like the buzzing of flies. “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.”!

Madge laughed. “Mixing with so many brainy people, perhaps,” she suggested; “and wondering what’s become of their souls.” “I wouldn’t say it, if I didn’t mean it,” answered Joan; “but you haven’t got to trouble yourself about that . . . You’re quite passable.” She smiled. It seemed to her that most women would find him more than passable.

Joan was worried. “I told Dad I should only ask him for enough to make up two hundred a year,” she explained. “He’ll laugh at me for not knowing my own mind.” To her surprise, he agreed with her. “The feudal system had a fine idea in it,” he said, “if it had been honestly carried out. A master should be the friend, the helper of his men. They should be one family.” He laughed and put his arm round her. “Poor little woman,” he said. “You’re looking so tired. It was jolly at the end.” He kissed her.