was "Really, sir!" He couldn't get a cab, he couldn't get a motor, he
couldn't get anything. Manager, head-clerk, porter, doorman and page,
he told them, one and all, what a dotty old spoof of a country they
lived in; that they were all dead-alive persons, fit to be neither
under nor above earth; that they wouldn't be one-two in a race with
January molasses--"Treacle, I believe you call it here!" And what did
they say to this scathing arraignment? Yes, what did they say?
"Really, sir!" He knew and hoped it would happen: if ever Germany
started war, it would be over before these Britishers made up their
minds that there was a war. A hundred years ago they had beaten
Napoleon (with the assistance of Spain, Austria, Germany and Russia),
and were now resting.

Quarter to one, and neither wife nor daughter; outside there, somewhere
in the fog; and he could not go to them. It was maddening. Molly
might be arrested and Kitty lost. Served him right; he should have put
his foot down. The idea of Molly being allowed to go with those
rattle-pated women! Suffragettes! A "Bah!" exploded with a loud
report. Hereafter he would show who voted in the Killigrew family.
Poor man! He was made of that unhappy mental timber which agrees
thoughtlessly to a proposition for the sake of peace and then regrets
it in the name of war. His wife and daughter twisted him round their
little fingers and then hunted cover when he found out what they had
done.

He went out again to the main entrance and smoked himself headachy. He
hated London. He had always hated it in theory, now he hated it in
fact. He hated tea, buttered muffins, marmalade, jam, toast, cricket,
box hedges three hundred years old, ruins, and the checkless baggage
system, the wet blankets called newspapers. All the racial hatred of
his forebears (Tipperary born) surged hot and wrathful in his veins.
At the drop of a hat he would have gone to war, individually, with all
England. "Really, sir!" Nothing but that, when he was dying of
anxiety!

A taxicab drew up before the canopy. He knew it was a taxicab because
he could hear the sound of the panting engine. The curb-end of the
canopy was curtained by the abominable fog. Mistily a forlorn figure
emerged. The doorman started leisurely toward this figure. Killigrew
pushed him aside violently. Molly, with her hat gone, her hair awry,
her dress torn, her gloves ragged, her eyes puffed! He sprang toward
her, fill