“It’s the frills and flummery part of it that frightens me,” he said. “You wouldn’t think that sensitiveness was my weak point. But it is. I’ve stood up to a Birmingham mob that was waiting to lynch me and enjoyed the experience; but I’d run ten miles rather than face a drawing-room of well-dressed people with their masked faces and ironic courtesies. It leaves me for days feeling like a lobster that has lost its shell.” Joan had difficulty in deciding on her own frock. Her four evening dresses, as she walked round them, spread out upon the bed, all looked too imposing, for what Mrs. Phillips had warned her would be a “homely affair.” She had one other, a greyish-fawn, with sleeves to the elbow, that she had had made expressly for public dinners and political At Homes. But that would be going to the opposite extreme, and might seem discourteous—to her hostess. Besides, “mousey” colours didn’t really suit her. They gave her a curious sense of being affected. In the end she decided to risk a black crêpe-de-chine, square cut, with a girdle of gold embroidery. There couldn’t be anything quieter than black, and the gold embroidery was of the simplest. She would wear it without any jewellery whatever: except just a star in her hair. The result, as she viewed the effect in the long glass, quite satisfied her. Perhaps the jewelled star did scintillate rather. It had belonged to her mother. But her hair was so full of shadows: it wanted something to relieve it. Also she approved the curved line of her bare arms. It was certainly very beautiful, a woman’s arm. She took her gloves in her hand and went down.!

“I spent a week at Grimsby, some years ago, organizing a fisherman’s union. They used to throw the fish back into the sea, tons upon tons of it, that men had risked their lives to catch, that would have fed half London’s poor. There was a ‘glut’ of it, they said. The ‘market’ didn’t want it. Funny, isn’t it, a ‘glut’ of food: and the kiddies can’t learn their lessons for want of it. I was talking with a farmer down in Kent. The plums were rotting on his trees. There were too many of them: that was the trouble. The railway carriage alone would cost him more than he could get for them. They were too cheap. So nobody could have them. It’s the muddle of the thing that makes me mad—the ghastly muddle-headed way the chief business of the world is managed. There’s enough food could be grown in this country to feed all the people and then of the fragments each man might gather his ten basketsful. There’s no miracle needed. I went into the matter once with Dalroy of the Board of Agriculture. He’s the best man they’ve got, if they’d only listen to him. It’s never been organized: that’s all. It isn’t the fault of the individual. It ought not to be left to the individual. The man who makes a corner in wheat in Chicago and condemns millions to privation—likely enough, he’s a decent sort of fellow in himself: a kind husband and father—would be upset for the day if he saw a child crying for bread. My dog’s a decent enough little chap, as dogs go, but I don’t let him run my larder. “But what’s the difference,” demanded Joan, “between a man owning one paper with a circulation of, say, six millions; or owning six with a circulation of a million apiece? By concentrating all his energies on one, a man with Carleton’s organizing genius might easily establish a single journal that would cover the whole field.”

And then he had wandered off into a maze of detail. The tradesman, dreaming perhaps of becoming a Whiteley, having to choose whether to go forward or remain for all time in the little shop. The statesman—should he abide by the faith that is in him and suffer loss of popularity, or renounce his God and enter the Cabinet? The artist, the writer, the mere labourer—there were too many of them. A few well-chosen examples would have sufficed. And then that irritating cough! “Good lad,” he said, patting her on the shoulder. “It will be an ugly world that will come out of all this hate and anger. The Lord will want all the help that He can get.” “What is he like?” asked Joan.