overned by bosses. Voluble
and inefficient creatures, I call them.'

Aunt Julia, conscious of her own honourable career, with its
achievements in enlightened philanthropy and its background of careful
study, heard this with inexpressible ire; but when she was dragged to
the execrable taste of a retaliation, and pointed to the British
countryside matron, as they saw her at Merriston--a creature, said Aunt
Julia, hardly credible in her complacency and narrowness, Miss Buckston
rejoined with an unruffled smile: 'Ah, we'll wake them up. They've good
stuff in them--good, staying stuff; and they do a lot of useful work in
keeping down Radicalism and keeping up the sentiment of our imperial
responsibilities and traditions. They are solid, at all events, not
hollow.' And to this poor Aunt Julia, whose traditions did not allow her
the retort of sheer brutality, could find no answer.

The absurd outcome of the situation was that Althea and Aunt Julia came
to look for succour to the girls. The girls were able--astonishingly so,
to cope with Miss Buckston. In the first place, they found her
inexpressibly funny, and neither Althea nor Aunt Julia quite succeeded
at that; and in the second, they rather liked her; they did not argue
with her, they did not take her seriously for a moment; they only played
buoyantly about her. A few months before, Althea would have been gravely
disturbed by their lack of reverence; she saw it now with guilty
satisfaction. Miss Buckston, among the nets they spread for her, plunged
and floundered like a good-tempered bull--at first with guileless
acquiescence in the game, and then with growing bewilderment. They
flouted gay cloaks before her dizzy eyes, and planted ribboned darts in
her quivering shoulders. Even Althea could not accuse them of
aggressiveness or rudeness. They never put themselves forward; they were
there already. They never twisted the tail of the British lion; they
never squeezed the eagle; they were far too secure under his wings for
that. The bird, indeed, had grown since Althea's youth, and could no
longer be carried about as a hostile trophy. They took it for granted,
gaily and kindly, that America was 'God's country,' and that all others
were schools or playgrounds for her children. They Were filled with a
confident faith in her future and in their own part in making that
future better. And something in the faith was infectious. Even Miss
Buckston felt it. Miss Buckston felt it, ind