Consols to mining
shares, brought business to a standstill in London on Monday afternoon.

On Tuesday entire blocks of offices remained unopened. In business, more
perhaps than in any other walk of life, self-preservation and
self-advancement were at that time, not alone the first, but the only
fixed law. With bread at 1s. 4d. a loaf, great ship-owners in England
were cabling the masters of wheat ships in both hemispheres to remain
where they were and await orders.

This last fact I learned from Leslie Wheeler, whom I happened to meet
hurrying from the City to Waterloo, on his way down to Weybridge. His
family were leaving for Devonshire next morning, to stay with relatives
there.

"But, bless me!" I said, when he told me that friends of his father,
shipping magnates, had despatched such cable messages that morning,
"surely that's a ruffianly thing to do, when the English people are
crying out for bread?"

Leslie shrugged his smartly-clad shoulders. "It's the English people's
own affair," he said.

"How's that?"

"Why, you see it's all a matter of insurance. All commerce is based on
insurance, in one form or another. The cost of shipping insurance to-day
is absolutely prohibitive; in other words, there isn't any. We did have
a permanent and non-fluctuating form of insurance of a kind one time.
But you Socialist chaps--social reform, Little England for the English,
and all that--you swept that away. Wouldn't pay for it; said it wasn't
wanted. Now it's gone, and you're feeling the pinch. The worst of it is,
you make the rest of us feel it, too. I'm thankful to say the dad's
pulling out fairly well. He told me yesterday he hadn't five hundred
pounds in anything British. Wise old bird, the dad!"

My friend's "You Socialist chaps" rather wrang my withers; its sting not
being lessened at all by my knowledge of its justice. I asked after the
welfare of the Wheeler family generally, but it was only as Leslie was
closing the door of the cab he hailed that I mentioned Sylvia.

"Yes, Sylvia's all right," he said, as he waved me good-bye; "but she
won't come away with the rest of us--absolutely refuses to budge."

And with that he was off, leaving me wondering about the girl who had at
one time occupied so much of my mind, but of late had had so little of
it. During the next few hours I wove quite a pretty story round Sylvia's
refusal to accompany her family. I even thought of her as joining
Constance Grey's nursing cor