He gave her a commission then and there for a heart to heart talk with a gentleman whom the editor of the Home News Department of the Daily Dispatch would have referred to as a “Leading Literary Luminary,” and who had just invented a new world in two volumes. She had asked him childish questions and had listened with wide-open eyes while he, sitting over against her, and smiling benevolently, had laid bare to her all the seeming intricacies of creation, and had explained to her in simple language the necessary alterations and improvements he was hoping to bring about in human nature. He had the sensation that his hair must be standing on end the next morning after having read in cold print what he had said. Expanding oneself before the admiring gaze of innocent simplicity and addressing the easily amused ear of an unsympathetic public are not the same thing. He ought to have thought of that. He threw aside the letter. “I’ll tell you what I want you to do,” he said. “It’s nothing to object to. Tell him that you’ve seen me and had a talk. I understand his scheme to be that the country should grow more and more food until it eventually becomes self-supporting; and that the Government should control the distribution. Tell him that with that I’m heart and soul in sympathy; and would like to help him.” He pushed aside a pile of papers and, leaning across the desk, spoke with studied deliberation. “If he can see his way to making his policy dependent upon Protection, we can work together.”!

“I called at your diggings,” he said. “I had to go through London. They told me you had started. It is good of you.” CHAPTER V

“It would help, undoubtedly,” the girl answered. “I don’t see any other way of getting hold of them.” “What’s he like to-night?” she asked, with a jerk of her head in the direction of the next room. She placed her bag carefully upon the sofa, and examined the new shawl as she did so. “She wouldn’t mind if she did,” explained Joan. “And you know what she’s like! How can one think what one’s saying with that silly, goggle-eyed face in front of one always.”