lgently, "and I certainly should
_not_ play with politics--I'm certain you'd hate them."

"Well, but I'm pledged, you know! I'm absolutely in honour bound to
play up if I'm wanted--"

"Whether you know the game or no?" said Christian, mockingly. "Very
sporting! I'm _not_ a Home Ruler, as it happens. I've no breadth
of outlook! _I_ haven' been in France for four years!"

"You're a reactionary!" declared Larry; "I tell you Self-Government is
in the air!"

With all her suppleness of mind, Christian had in her something of the
inbred obstinacy of fidelity that often goes with long descent. Her
colour rose.

"_We_ have always stood for the King!" she said, holding up her
head, and looking past Larry to the high, sailing clouds.

Larry began to laugh.

"Christian! It's awfully becoming to you to talk politics! Keep quite
quiet and I'll make a study of you as Britannia--or Joan of Arc--"

It was characteristic of these young people, that in the heat of
political argument they joined battle as freely as if no other point
of contact existed for them. This it is to be born and bred in
Ireland, where people live their opinions, and everyone is a patriot
with a different point of view, and politics are a hereditary disease,
blatant as a port-wine mark, and persistent as a family nose.

Miss Frederica, with a guilty remembrance of Lady Isabel's enquiries,
had established her weeding apparatus at a bed near the yew-hedge. She
heard the voices raised in discussion, and, catching words here and
there, felt that if these were the topics that occupied her charges,
Isabel need not have inflicted upon her the abominable nuisance of
poking in her nose where it was not wanted. Thus did Miss Coppinger
summarise the duties of a chaperon; but it must be remembered that she
had never been broken to the work, and in any case she had been out of
harness for four years.

The luncheon gong sounded to her across the Michaelmas daisies, and
the tall scarlet lobelias, and the gorgeous dahlias of the September
garden; she gathered her tools together and projected a shriek in the
direction of the yew hedge.

"Children! Lunch!"

As, dizzy with stooping, she slowly reared herself to be full height,
she saw a black, moving blur on the drive beyond the garden. She
rubbed her eyes; the blur defined itself as a man in priestly black.
Not Mr. Fetherston, a she had first believed, but Father Sweeny.

"A wolf in sheep's clothing!" thought Frederi