She had been busy at her machine when Joan had entered; and a pile of delicate white work lay folded on a chair beside her. “That’s the word,” agreed Mr. Simson. “Braised.” He watched while Mary took things needful from the cupboard, and commenced to peel an onion.!

“Unless it all comes right in the end,” she added musingly; “and the poor old soul pegs out. I wouldn’t give much for her liver.” “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.”

“Don’t eat me,” laughed Joan. “I haven’t been sent to you as a missionary. I’m only a humble messenger. I suppose the argument is that, good profits assured to him, the farmer would bustle up and produce more.” Joan considered. “Yes,” she answered. “I should say he’s just the man to manage her.” “No, we don’t,” she said, “not those of us who think. We know we shall never oust man from his place. He will always be the greater. We want to help him; that’s all.”