lute
difference from each other. His difference from all of them was so
absolute that it was a sort of distinction in itself.

As soon as he got there Norah came up with the subalterns in tow. She
made a little friendly rush at him. She said, "I'm Norah, the youngest. I
expect Viola's told you about me. She's told me lots about _you_."

She meant well, dear child. But she overdid it. She hadn't allowed--none
of us except Viola had allowed--for his appalling sensitiveness. The poor
chap told me afterwards that he could bear up against the Canon's stiff
face and what he called Mrs. Thesiger's ladylike refinements of
repudiation, and the poker that Victoria had swallowed, but that that
kid's kindness, coming on the top of it all, floored him. He took her
hand (I think he squeezed it), and his mouth opened, but he couldn't
speak; he just breathed hard and flushed furiously; and his eyes looked
as if he were going to cry. But of course he didn't cry. He was, he said,
far too much afraid of the subalterns.

It was a good thing, perhaps, after all, that it took him that way. His
emotion made him quiet and subdued; it toned him down, so that he started
well from the very beginning.

After tea he recovered and talked to the Colonel and the subalterns while
the rest of us listened. He said, I remember, that the building of
Dreadnoughts was of more importance to the country than Disestablishment.
And even more important than the building of Dreadnoughts was the
building of submarines. The submarine was the ship of the future. There
should be, he said, at least fifty submarines for every Dreadnought
turned out.

That made them all sit up. (It was not a platitude in nineteen-six, but a
prophecy.) The Colonel and the subalterns hung on his words; and when the
Canon saw them hanging, his mouth began to relax a little of its own
accord. In his first hour Jevons had scored, notably.

It was as if he had said to himself, "I'll bring these people round, see
if I don't. I give myself an hour."

Dinner passed without any misadventure, but you could see that he was
careful. Also you could see by his twinkle that he was amusing himself by
his own precautions, as if, again, he had said to himself, "They're all
expecting me to make noises over my soup, and they'll be disappointed. I
just won't make any."

We had coffee in the garden afterwards. And it was then that the Canon
asked him what his politics were?

Jevons said he had no po