ther isn't--little by little."

Frances Freeland, who during Felix's long speech had almost closed her
eyes, opened them, and looked piercingly at the top of his head.

"Darling," she said, "I've got the very thing for it. You must take some
with you when you go tonight. John is going to try it."

Checked in the flow of his philosophy, Felix blinked like an owl
surprised.

"Mother," he said, "YOU only have the gift of keeping young."

"Oh! my dear, I'm getting dreadfully old. I have the greatest difficulty
in keeping awake sometimes when people are talking. But I mean to fight
against it. It's so dreadfully rude, and ugly, too; I catch myself
sometimes with my mouth open."

Flora said quietly: "Granny, I have the very best thing for that--quite
new!"

A sweet but rather rueful smile passed over Frances Freeland's face.
"Now," she said, "you're chaffing me," and her eyes looked loving.

It is doubtful if John understood the drift of Felix's exordium, it is
doubtful if he had quite listened--he having so much to not listen to at
the Home Office that the practice was growing on him. A vested interest
to John was a vested interest, culture was culture, and security was
certainly security--none of them were symbols of age. Further, the
social question--at least so far as it had to do with outbreaks of youth
and enthusiasm--was too familiar to him to have any general significance
whatever. What with women, labor people, and the rest of it, he had no
time for philosophy--a dubious process at the best. A man who had to get
through so many daily hours of real work did not dissipate his energy in
speculation. But, though he had not listened to Felix's remarks, they
had ruffled him. There is no philosophy quite so irritating as that of a
brother! True, no doubt, that the country was in a bad way, but as to
vested interests and security, that was all nonsense! The guilty causes
were free thought and industrialism.

Having seen them all off to Hampstead, he gave his mother her good-night
kiss. He was proud of her, a wonderful woman, who always put a good face
on everything! Even her funny way of always having some new thing or
other to do you good--even that was all part of her wanting to make the
best of things. She never lost her 'form'!

John worshipped that kind of stoicism which would die with its head up
rather than live with its tail down. Perhaps the moment of which he was
most proud in all his lif