ere certainly much
too free.

It was a fine clear night and he walked to his rooms in Marlehouse. He
felt that he had not been a social success. He was much more at home
on the platform than in the ball-room, yet he was shrewd enough to see
that his lack of adaptability stood in his way politically.

How could he learn these things?

And as if in answer to his question, there suddenly sounded in his ears
the fat chuckling voice of the black satin lady:

"Well, well, there's many a pretty Tory lady married a Radical before
this, _and_ changed her politics, so don't you lose heart."

CHAPTER X

"THE GANPIES"

"Father's mother," living alone far away in the Forest of Dean, rarely
came to Redmarley, and the children never went to visit her. A frail
old lady to whom one was never presented save tidily clad and fresh
from the hands of nurse for a few moments, with injunctions still
ringing in one's ears as to the necessity for a quiet and decorous
demeanour.

This was grandmother, a shadow rather than a reality.

The Ganpies were something very different. The name, an abbreviation
for grandparents, was invented by Grantly when he was two years old,
and long usage had turned it into a term of endearment. People who
knew them well could never think of General and Mrs Grantly apart, each
was the complement of the other; and for the Ffolliot children they
represented a dual fount of fun and laughter, understanding and
affection. They were the medium through which one beheld the
never-ending pageant unrolled before the entranced eyes of such happy
children as happened to "belong" gloriously to one "commanding the R.A.
Woolwich." And intercourse with the Ganpies was largely leavened by
concrete joys in the shape of presents, pantomimes, tips, and all
things dear to the heart of youth all the world over.

Such were the Ganpies. Nothing shadowy about them. They were a
glorious reality; beloved, familiar, frequent.

They were still comparatively young people when their daughter married,
and Mrs Grantly was a grandmother at forty-one. They would have liked
a large family themselves, but seeing that Providence had only seen fit
to bestow on them one child, they looked upon the six grandchildren as
an attempt to make amends.

Mrs Grantly's one quarrel with Marjory Ffolliot was on the score of
what she called her "niggardliness and greed," in refusing to hand over
entirely one of the six to their grandparen