and Jay never broke their promises to each other, and there was a
tacit agreement that when they found it necessary to lie to each other,
they always gave each other warning. Where the rest of the world was
concerned, I am afraid they used their discretion in this matter.

"It ought to be stopped. The tactful foot of Family authority ought to
step on it."

He presented his penny angrily to the 'bus-conductor.

"I expect this sort of man asks Jay to walk out with him," he thought,
and with a cold glance took the ticket offered to him.

"Lucky I'm so utterly selfish," he thought, "or I should be
devilish worried."

His train was one which boasted a restaurant car, and Kew patronised
this institution. But when he was in the middle of cold meat, he thought:
"She is probably trying to live on twopence-halfpenny a week. Continual
tripe and onions."

So he refused pudding. The pudding, persistent as only a railway pudding
can be, came back incredulously three times. But Kew pushed it away.

"If I could get anybody outside the Family to use their influence, I
should be within the letter of the law. But I mostly know subalterns, and
nobody below a Brigadier would be likely to have much influence with Jay.
She'd probably talk down even a sergeant-major."

It seems curious that he should deplore the fact that Jay had turned into
a bus-conductor more deeply than he had deplored her experiments in
sweated employment. I think that a uniformed sister or wife is almost
unbearable to most men, except, perhaps, one in the nurse's uniform, of
which even St. Paul might have approved. The gaiters of the
'bus-conductor had shaken Kew to his foundations. The thought of the
skirt still brought his heart into his mouth. He was so lacking in the
modern mind that he still considered himself a gentleman. No Socialist,
speaking between clenched teeth in a strangled voice of largely
groundless protest, had ever gained the ear of Kew. He had never joined a
society of any sort. He had never attended a public meeting since he gave
up being a Salvationist at the age of ten.

"It must be stopped," he said, as he got out of the train. "I'll think of
a way in my bath to-morrow." This was always the moment he looked forward
to for inspirations.

Anonyma was observable as he walked from the station to the inn, craning
extravagantly from the sitting-room window. She came downstairs, and met
him at the door.

"Such a disaster," she said, and hand