. We have great and weighty matters to discuss. You
women are permitted to be present, but we allot to you the hardest task
of all--silence."

"A sheer impossibility, so far as mother is concerned," Elisabeth
observed. "As for me, I call myself a practical politician. I intend
to take part in the discussion."

Mr. Foley looked across the round table with twinkling eyes.

"We are going to talk about Universal Manhood Suffrage," he announced.

"Scandalous," Elisabeth declared, "before we have our votes!"

"Perhaps," Maraton suggested, "it was Universal Suffrage that Mr. Foley
meant."

"Including children and aliens," Lady Grenside remarked. "I am sure the
children at the school I went over yesterday could have ruled the nation
admirably. They seemed to know positively everything."

"Mother, you are too frivolous," Elisabeth insisted. "If this tone of
levity is not dropped, I shall start another subject of conversation.
Mr. Maraton, you, of course, are in favour of Universal Manhood
Suffrage?"

"I am not at all sure about it," he replied. "It gives the vote to a
lot of people I'd sooner see deported."

"But you--you to talk like that!" she exclaimed.

He smiled.

"Votes should belong to those who have a stake in the country, not to
the flotsam and jetsam," he continued solemnly.

"But you're a Tory!" she cried.

"Not a bit," he answered. "If I had my way, you would very soon see
that one man wouldn't have so much more stake in the country than
another. Then Universal Suffrage follows automatically--in fact that's
the way I'd arrive at it."

"Don't ever let Mr. Maraton be Prime Minister!" Elisabeth begged.
"He's too iconoclastic."

"And just now I was a Tory," Maraton protested.

"It isn't my fault that you are a study in contraries," she laughed.
"But then politicians are rather like that, aren't they? I think really
that they should be like surgeons, specialise all the time."

"Come down to Ranelagh and play golf after luncheon," Lord Carton
suggested abruptly from across the table. "I've got my little racing
car outside and I'll take you down there like a rocket."

"Thanks," she answered, "I want particularly to stay in till four
o'clock this afternoon. Besides, you can't play golf, you know."

"I don't think Elisabeth has improved," he remarked to her mother,
turning deliberately away.

"And I am sure Jack's left his heart in Central America," Elisabeth
declared. "He was always fond of dark-com