George adjusted his cravat impatiently. "I'm afraid I
don't quite follow you, mother. These little flights of
yours---- They belong to your generation, I suppose. It
was a more sentimental one than mine. You are not
very young. And you certainly are not a sham. The
statues are interesting, but I fail to see why they
should have had such an effect upon you."

"Oh!" said Frances. "But you did not stay alone with
them as long as I did, or you would have felt it too.
Now I am sure that the debates in Parliament impressed
you just as they did me?"

George said nothing, but she went on eagerly. It never
occurred to her that he could be bored by her impressions
in these greatest days of her life. "To see a half-dozen
well-groomed young men settle the affairs of India and
Australia in a short, indifferent colloquy! How shy and
awkward they were, too! They actually stuttered out
their sentences in their fear of posing or seeming
pretentious. So English! Don't you think it was very
English, George?"

"I really did not think about it at all. I have had very
different things to occupy me," said George, coldly
superior to all mothers and Parliaments. This is the
church."

The cab stopped before an iron door between two shops
in the most thronged part of Bishopsgate Street. He