Funny old pater had, every one knew, begun his career as a reporter on a
provincial paper. If funny old pater had been just a shade less clever or
enterprising, his family would have been educated at grammar schools and
gone into business in their teens. Of course, Mrs. Potter had pulled the
social level up a bit; but what, if you came to that, had Mrs. Potter
been? Only the daughter of a country doctor; only the underpaid secretary
of a lady novelist, for all she was so conceited now.

So naturally Socialism, that disease of the underbred, had taken hold of
the less careful of the Potter young.

'And are you going to write for this weekly what-d'you-call-it too,
Jane?' Mrs. Frank inquired.

'No. I've not got a job yet. I'm going to look round a little first.'

'Oh, that's sense. Have a good time at home for a bit. Well, it's time
you had a holiday, isn't it? I wish old Frank could. He's working like an
old horse. He may slave himself to death for those Pimlico pigs, for all
any of them care. It's never "thank you"; it's always "more, more, more,"
with them. That's your Socialism, Johnny.'

The twins got on very well with their sister-in-law, but thought her a
fool. When, as she was fond of doing, she mentioned Socialism, they,
rightly believing her grasp of that economic system to be even less
complete than that of most people, always changed the subject.

But on this occasion they did not have time to change it before Clare
said, 'Mother's writing a novel about Socialism. She shows it up like