few days," I
answered.

"But why shouldn't a man be a Liberal if he wants to be? We are about
a hundred years behind the times down here."

"And had better stay there if we want peace," I added.

"Are you a Liberal?"

"Goodness knows."

"I like a man who knows what he is."

"You mean you like The Bradder; why not say so?"

"Because I meant nothing of the kind. We are going to walk over to
Chipping Norbury, if you will come with us."

"I can't. I have promised to call on Mrs. Faulkner, who won't see me."

"Mrs. Faulkner has been rude to mother, and has behaved very
foolishly," Nina said, in a way which she considered impressive and I
thought humorous.

So The Bradder and Nina went to Chipping Norbury without me, and he
stayed for three more days, by which time even my father did not want
him to go, though he talked to my mother about him as one of those
misguided young men who want England to stand on its head just to see
what it would look like.

I found out afterwards that The Bradder described my father to some one
as a mixture of cayenne pepper and kindness, and, since there was no
harm in it, I passed it on.

"I won't have people making up these things about me," he said, but he
chuckled, and I am sure he liked the cayenne pepper part of the mixture.

CHAPTER XX

THE HEDONISTS

Fred Foster's people came back from India during the summer, and he
spent all the vac with them, though I tried to make him come to us for
the shooting. He had, however, got an idea that Nina did not want him,
and nothing I could do was successful in removing it. I told him that
Nina had been greatly improved by Paris; I did not like the expression,
but I did not see why he should think it ridiculous. Still, if he
meant to be obstinate it was no use wasting time in writing letters at
which he gibed, so I left him alone.

Jack Ward managed to appease his father, and having done it he set out
on a campaign which for thoroughness beat anything I have ever
discovered. He went off at the end of July to stay with a tutor who
coached him in history and rowing, and he stayed with him until the
Oxford term began. The tutor was a rowing blue who did not, from
Jack's account of him, mind how little work his pupils did as long as
they were ready to go on the river, but Jack assured me that he had
read for four or five hours every day. To start with a history coach
two years before his schools struck me as being magni