dden drop into a confidential undertone, "Or else I want to
pray."

"When is Michaelmas Day?" said Ann Veronica, a little abruptly.

"Heaven knows!" said Mr. Manning; and added, "the twenty-ninth."

"I thought it was earlier," said Ann Veronica. "Wasn't Parliament to
reassemble?"

He put out his hand and leaned against a tree and crossed his legs.
"You're not interested in politics?" he asked, almost with a note of
protest.

"Well, rather," said Ann Veronica. "It seems--It's interesting."

"Do you think so? I find my interest in that sort of thing decline and
decline."

"I'm curious. Perhaps because I don't know. I suppose an intelligent
person OUGHT to be interested in political affairs. They concern us
all."

"I wonder," said Mr. Manning, with a baffling smile.

"I think they do. After all, they're history in the making."

"A sort of history," said Mr. Manning; and repeated, "a sort of history.
But look at these glorious daisies!"

"But don't you think political questions ARE important?"

"I don't think they are this afternoon, and I don't think they are to
you."

Ann Veronica turned her back on the Michaelmas daisies, and faced toward
the house with an air of a duty completed.

"Just come to that seat now you are here, Miss Stanley, and look down
the other path; there's a vista of just the common sort. Better even
than these."

Ann Veronica walked as he indicated.

"You know I'm old-fashioned, Miss Stanley. I don't think women need to
trouble about political questions."

"I want a vote," said Ann Veronica.

"Really!" said Mr. Manning, in an earnest voice, and waved his hand to
the alley of mauve and purple. "I wish you didn't."

"Why not?" She turned on him.

"It jars. It jars with all my ideas. Women to me are something so
serene, so fine, so feminine, and politics are so dusty, so sordid,
so wearisome and quarrelsome. It seems to me a woman's duty to be
beautiful, to BE beautiful and to behave beautifully, and politics
are by their very nature ugly. You see, I--I am a woman worshipper.
I worshipped women long before I found any woman I might ever hope
to worship. Long ago. And--the idea of committees, of hustings, of
agenda-papers!"

"I don't see why the responsibility of beauty should all be shifted on
to the women," said Ann Veronica, suddenly remembering a part of Miss
Miniver's discourse.

"It rests with them by the nature of things. Why should you who are
queens come down from yo