“I would like to go back,” she said. Flossie fixed a relentless eye upon her. “He’ll wait till the bird has got a bit more than that to whisper to him,” she suggested.!

“Flossie engaged!” Joan seemed surprised. He laughed. “You will find all your pet reforms depend upon it, when you come to work them out,” he said. “You can’t have a minimum wage without a minimum price.”

“How did it all happen?” she persisted. “Was it very beautiful, in the beginning?” She wished she had not added that last. The words had slipped from her before she knew. “You think of God as of a great King,” he said, “a Ruler who orders all things: who could change all things in the twinkling of an eye. You see the cruelty and the wrong around you. And you say to yourselves: ‘He has ordered it. If He would, He could have willed it differently.’ So that in your hearts you are angry with Him. How could it be otherwise? What father, loving his children, would see them suffer wrong, when by stretching out a hand he could protect them: turn their tears to gladness? What father would see his children doing evil to one another and not check them: would see them following ways leading to their destruction, and not pluck them back? If God has ordered all things, why has He created evil, making His creatures weak and sinful? Does a father lay snares for his children: leading them into temptation: delivering them unto evil?” Joan walked on slowly. She had the worried feeling with which, once or twice, when a schoolgirl, she had crawled up the stairs to bed after the head mistress had informed her that she would see her in her private room at eleven o’clock the next morning, leaving her to guess what about. It occurred to her, in Trafalgar Square, that she had promised to take tea with the Greysons the next afternoon, to meet some big pot from America. She would have to get out of that. She felt it wouldn’t do to put off Flossie.