"To Mrs. Brocklehurst?"

"It wasn't necessary," he replied--and immediately added, in semi-serious
apology: "I thought it was admirable, what you said. If she'd talked to a
dozen syndicalist leaders, she couldn't have had it put more clearly.
Only I'm afraid she doesn't know the truth when she hears it."

"Now you're making fun of me!"

"Indeed I'm not," he protested.

"But I didn't give any of the arguments, any of the--philosophy," she
pronounced the word hesitatingly. "I don't understand it yet as well as I
should."

"You are it," he said. "It's not always easy to understand what we are
--it's generally after we've become something else that we comprehend
what we have been."

And while she was pondering over this one of the ladies who had been
waiting on the table came toward Insall.

"The children have finished, Brooks," she informed him. "It's time to let
in the others."

Insall turned to Janet. "This is Miss Bumpus--and this is Mrs. Maturin,"
he said. "Mrs. Maturin lives in Silliston."

The greeting of this lady differed from that of Mrs. Brocklehurst. She,
too, took Janet's hand.