few scratches,' he said. 'They'll be hit hard enough as it is.' If he'd
been a poor devil on eighteen shillings a week it would have been
different. He was an engineer earning good wages; so he wasn't feeling
sore and bitter against half the world. Suppose you tried to run an army
with your men half starved while your officers had more than they could
eat. It's been tried and what's been the result? See that your soldiers
have their proper rations, and the General can sit down to his six-course
dinner, if he will. They are not begrudging it to him.

"A nation works on its stomach. Underfeed your rank and file, and what
sort of a fight are you going to put up against your rivals. I want to
see England going ahead. I want to see her workers properly fed. I want
to see the corn upon her unused acres, the cattle grazing on her wasted
pastures. I object to the food being thrown into the sea--left to rot
upon the ground while men are hungry--side-tracked in Chicago, while the
children grow up stunted. I want the commissariat properly organized."

He had been staring through her rather than at her, so it had seemed to
Joan. Suddenly their eyes met, and he broke into a smile.

"I'm so awfully sorry," he said. "I've been talking to you as if you
were a public meeting. I'm afraid I'm more used to them than I am to
women. Please forgive me."

The whole man had changed. The eyes had a timid pleading in them.

Joan laughed. "I've been feeling as if I were the King of Bavaria," she
said.

"How did he feel?" he asked her, leaning forward.