never return, that
her friends the Dormers were there. Mrs. Hilary shot out, with still
averted face, that the whole of Ireland ought to be sunk to the bottom
of the sea, it was more bother than it was worth. This was her usual and
only contribution towards a solution of the Irish question.

Then Mr. Churchill and Russia had their turn (it was the time of the
Golovin trouble) and Grandmama said people seemed always to get so
very sly, as well as so very much annoyed and excited, whenever Russia
was mentioned, and that seemed like a sign that God did not mean us,
in this country, to mention it much, perhaps not even to think of it.
She personally seldom did. Then Neville read a paragraph about the
Anglo-Catholic Congress, and about that Grandmama was for the first time
a little severe, for Grandpapa had not been an Anglo-Catholic, and indeed
in his day there were none of this faith. You were either High Church,
Broad Church or Evangelical. (Unless, of course, you had been led astray
by Huxley and Darwin and were nothing whatever.) Grandpapa had been
Broad, with a dash of Evangelical; or perhaps it was the other way round;
but anyhow Grandpapa had not been High Church, or, as they called it in
his time, Tractarian. So Grandmama enquired, snippily, "Who _are_ these
Anglo-Catholics, my dear? One seems to hear so much of them in these
days. I can't help thinking they are rather _noisy_...." as she might
have spoken of Bolshevists, or the Labour Party, or the National Party,
or Sinn Fein, or any other of the organisations of which Grandpapa had
been innocent. "There are so many of these new things," said Grandmama,
"I daresay modern young people like Gerda and Kay are quite in with it
all."

"I'm afraid," said Neville, "that Gerda and Kay are secularists at
present."

"Poor children," Grandmama said gently. Secularism made her think of
the violent and vulgar Mr. Bradlaugh. It was, in her view, a noisier
thing even than Anglo-Catholicism. "Well, they have plenty of time to
get over it and settle down to something quieter." Broad-Evangelical she
meant, or Evangelical-Broad; and Neville smiled at the idea of Gerda,
in particular, being either of these. She believed that if Gerda were to
turn from secularism it would either be to Anglo-Catholicism or to Rome.
Or Gerda might become a Quaker, or a lone mystic contemplating in woods,
but a Broad-Evangelical, no. There was a delicate, reckless extravagance
about Gerda which would