w you agreed with her."

"Who said I agreed with her?" snapped the Professor. "I'm in a very
awkward position."

"I suppose," said Marigold--he was hesitating with the door in his
hand--"it wouldn't be of any use my seeing her myself?"

"I believe," said the Professor, "that she is fond of the neighbourhood
of the Cross Stones towards sundown. You can choose for yourself, but
if I were you I should think twice about it."

"I was wondering," said Marigold, "whether, if I put it to her as a
personal favour, she might not be willing to see Edith again and
persuade her that she was only joking?"

A light began to break upon the Professor.

"What do you think has happened?" he asked.

"Well," explained Marigold, "I take it that your young foreign friend
has met my wife and talked politics to her, and that what has happened
is the result. She must be a young person of extraordinary ability;
but it would be only losing one convert, and I could make it up to her
in--in other ways." He spoke with unconscious pathos. It rather
touched the Professor.

"It might mean," said the Professor--"that is, assuming that it can be
done at all--Mrs. Marigold's returning to her former self entirely,
taking no further interest in politics whatever."

"I should be so very grateful," answered Marigold.

The Professor had mislaid his spectacles, but thinks there was a tear
in Marigold's eye.

"I'll do what I can," said the Professor. "Of course, you mustn't
count on it. It may be easier to start a woman thinking than to stop
her, even for a--" The Professor checked himself just in time. "I'll
talk to her," he said; and Marigold gripped his hand and departed.

It was about time he did. The full extent of Malvina's activities
during those few midsummer weeks, till the return of Flight Commander
Raffleton, will never perhaps be fully revealed. According to the
Doctor, the whole business has been grossly exaggerated. There are
those who talk as if half the village had been taken to pieces, altered
and improved and sent back home again in a mental state unrecognisable
by their own mothers. Certain it is that Dawson, R.A., generally
described by everybody except his wife as "a lovable little man," and
whose only fault was an incurable habit of punning, both in season--if
such a period there be--and more often out, suddenly one morning
smashed a Dutch interior, fifteen inches by nine, over the astonished
head of Mrs. Dawson.