“That’s like you women,” he answered with a smile. “You pretend to be superior; and then you copy us.” “Oh,” said Miss Tolley. “And were there any children?”!

Mary flushed. She seemed to want to get back to her cooking. “It’s something inside us, dearie,” she thought: “that nobody hears but ourselves.” “To accept,” she answered. “They won’t influence you—the terriers, as you call them. You are too strong. It is you who will sway them. It isn’t as if you were a mere agitator. Take this opportunity of showing them that you can build, plan, organize; that you were meant to be a ruler. You can’t succeed without them, as things are. You’ve got to win them over. Prove to them that they can trust you.”

They walked a little way in silence. Mary slipped her hand into Joan’s. “You wouldn’t care to come home and have a bit of supper with me, would you, dearie?” she asked. “What’s he like in himself?” he asked her. “You’ve been seeing something of him, haven’t you?” Hilda! Why had she never thought of it? The whole thing was so obvious. “You ought not to think about yourself. You ought to think only of him and of his work. Nothing else matters.” If she could say that to Joan, what might she not have said to her mother who, so clearly, she divined to be the incubus—the drag upon her father’s career? She could hear the child’s dry, passionate tones—could see Mrs. Phillips’s flabby cheeks grow white—the frightened, staring eyes. Where her father was concerned the child had neither conscience nor compassion. She had waited her time. It was a few days after Hilda’s return to school that Mrs. Phillips had been first taken ill.