face of his family and of his country.
Neither Frances nor Anthony would have been likely to forget the
imminence of civil war (only that they didn't really believe in it),
when from morning till night Michael talked and wrote of nothing else.
In this Michael was not carried away by collective feeling; his dream of
Ireland's freedom was a secret and solitary dream. Nobody he knew
shared it but Lawrence Stephen. The passion he brought to it made him
hot and restless and intense. Frances expressed her opinion of the Irish
crisis when she said, "I wish that Carson man would mind his own
business. This excitement is very bad for Michael."

And she thanked Heaven that Ireland was not England, and that none of
them lived there. If there was civil war in Ireland for a week or two,
Anthony and the boys would be out of it.

Frances was also alive to the war between Capital and Labour. There was,
indeed, something very intimate and personal to Frances in this
particular affair of the nation; for Anthony's business was being
disagreeably affected by the strike in the building trade.

So much so that Anthony had dismissed his chauffeur and given up his
idea of turning the stable loft into a billiard-room. He had even
thought of trying to let the shooting-box and the cottage on the
Yorkshire moors which he had bought, unforeseeingly, in the spring of
last year; but Michael and Nicholas had persuaded him that this extreme
measure was unnecessary.

And Frances, even with the strike hanging over her, was happy. For the
children, at their first sight of possible adversity, were showing what
was in them. Their behaviour made her more arrogant than ever. Michael
and Dorothea had given up their allowances and declared their complete
ability to support themselves. (They earned about fifty pounds a year
each on an average.) She had expected this from Dorothy, but not from
Michael. Nicholas was doing the chauffeur's work in his absence; and
John showed eagerness to offer up his last year at Oxford; he pressed it
on his father as his contribution to the family economies.

Veronica brought her minute dividends (paid to her every quarter through
Ferdinand Cameron's solicitors), and laid them at Frances's and
Anthony's feet. ("As if," Anthony said, "I could have taken her poor
little money!") Veronica thought she could go out as a music teacher.

There were moments when Frances positively enjoyed the strike. Her mind
refused to grasp the d