“Don’t tease her,” said Madge. “She’s having an evening off.” “I’m sure I am,” she said. “Make home-coming a change to him. As you said yourself the other evening. It’s good for him to get away from it all, now and then.”!

“As friends of Mary Stopperton,” he said, “we meet on neutral ground. But in all matters of moment I expect we are as far asunder as the poles. I stand for the People.” “We’ll keep it off that plane, if you don’t mind,” answered Joan with a touch of severity.

A Conscientious Objector. She might have guessed it. A “Conchy,” as they would call him in the Press: all the spiteful screamers who had never risked a scratch, themselves, denouncing him as a coward. The local Dogberrys of the tribunals would fire off their little stock of gibes and platitudes upon him, propound with owlish solemnity the new Christianity, abuse him and condemn him, without listening to him. Jeering mobs would follow him through the streets. More than once, of late, she had encountered such crowds made up of shrieking girls and foul-mouthed men, surging round some white-faced youngster while the well-dressed passers-by looked on and grinned. He had lost interest in politics. “Did I laugh?” said Joan.