that Gideon
and Katherine Varick had less of it than any one else he knew; the
mediocre was repellent to them; cant and sentiment made them sick; they
made a fetish of hard truth, and so much despised most of their
neighbours that they would not experience the temptation to grab at
popularity. In fact, they would dislike it if it came.

3

_Socialist Cecily_ came out while they were at Lyme Regis. Mrs. Potter
sent the twins a copy. In their detached way, the twins read it, and gave
it to the others to look at.

'Very typical stuff,' Gideon summed it up, after a glance. 'It will no
doubt have an excellent sale.... It must be interesting for you to watch
it being turned out. I wish you would ask me to stay with you some time.
Yours must be an even more instructive household than mine.'

Gideon was a Russian Jew on his father's side, and a Harrovian. He had no
decency and no manners. He made Juke, who was an Englishman and an
Etonian, and had more of both, uncomfortable sometimes. For, after all,
the rudiments of family loyalty might as well be kept, among the general
destruction which he, more sanguinely than Gideon, hoped for.

But the twins did not bother. Jane said, in her equable way, 'You'll be
bored to death; angry, too; but come if you like.... We've a sister, more
Potterish than the parents. She'll hate you.'

Gideon said, 'I expect so,' and they left his prospective visit at that,
with Jane chuckling quietly at her private vision of Gideon and Clare in
juxtaposition.

4

But _Socialist Cecily_ did not have a good sale after all. It was
guillotined, with many of its betters, by the European war, which began
while the Anti-Potters were at Swanage, a place replete with Potterism.
Potterism, however, as a subject for investigation, had by this time
given place to international diplomacy, that still more intriguing study.
The Anti-Potters abused every government concerned, and Gideon said, on
August 1st, 'We shall be fools if we don't come in.'

Juke was still dubious. He was a good Radical, and good Radicals were
dubious on this point until the invasion of Belgium.

'To throw back the world a hundred years....'

Gideon shrugged his shoulders. He belonged to no political party, and had
the shrewd, far-seeing eyes of his father's race.

'It's going to be thrown back anyhow. Germany will see to that. And if we
keep out of it, Germany will grab Europe. We've got to come in, if we can
get a decent pret