But I don't know what's come over me--I actually had to ask
Augustus the name of the lady Hamlet was in love with, as you were out,
Katharine, and Heaven knows what he mayn't put down about me in his
diary."

"I wish," Katharine started, with great impetuosity, and checked
herself. Her mother always stirred her to feel and think quickly, and
then she remembered that her father was there, listening with attention.

"What is it you wish?" he asked, as she paused.

He often surprised her, thus, into telling him what she had not meant to
tell him; and then they argued, while Mrs. Hilbery went on with her own
thoughts.

"I wish mother wasn't famous. I was out at tea, and they would talk to
me about poetry."

"Thinking you must be poetical, I see--and aren't you?"

"Who's been talking to you about poetry, Katharine?" Mrs. Hilbery
demanded, and Katharine was committed to giving her parents an account
of her visit to the Suffrage office.

"They have an office at the top of one of the old houses in Russell
Square. I never saw such queer-looking people. And the man discovered
I was related to the poet, and talked to me about poetry. Even Mary
Datchet seems different in that atmosphere."

"Yes, the office atmosphere is very bad for the soul," said Mr. Hilbery.

"I don't remember any offices in Russell Square in the old days, when
Mamma lived there," Mrs. Hilbery mused, "and I can't fancy turning one
of those noble great rooms into a stuffy little Suffrage office. Still,
if the clerks read poetry there must be something nice about them."

"No, because they don't read it as we read it," Katharine insisted.

"But it's nice to think of them reading your grandfather, and not
filling up those dreadful little forms all day long," Mrs. Hilbery
persisted, her notion of office life being derived from some chance view
of a scene behind the counter at her bank, as she slipped the sovereigns
into her purse.

"At any rate, they haven't made a convert of Katharine, which was what I
was afraid of," Mr. Hilbery remarked.

"Oh no," said Katharine very decidedly, "I wouldn't work with them for
anything."

"It's curious," Mr. Hilbery continued, agreeing with his daughter, "how
the sight of one's fellow-enthusiasts always chokes one off. They
show up the faults of one's cause so much more plainly than one's
antagonists. One can be enthusiastic in one's study, but directly one
comes into touch with the people who agree with one, all t