The twins both heard it used at Oxford, in their second year.  They recognised its meaning without being told.  And both felt that it was up to them to take the opportunity of testifying, of severing any connection that might yet exist in any one’s mind between them and the other products of their parents.  They did so, with the uncompromising decision proper to their years, and with, perhaps, the touch of indecency, regardlessness of the proprieties, which was characteristic of them.  Their friends soon discovered that they need not guard their tongues in speaking of Potterism before the Potter twins.  The way the twins put it was, ’Our family is responsible for more than its share of the beastly thing; the least we can do is to help to do it in,’ which sounded chivalrous.  And another way they put it was, ’We’re not going to have any one connecting us with it,’ which sounded sensible.

So they joined the Anti-Potter League, not blind to the piquant humour of their being found therein.

6

Mr. Potter said to the twins, in his thin little voice, ’Don’t mind mother and me, children.  Tell us all about the A.P.L.  It may do us good.’

But the twins knew it would not do their mother good.  It would need too much explanation; and then she would still not understand.  She might even be very angry, as she was (though she pretended she was only amused) with some reviewers....  If your mother is Leila Yorke, and has hard blue eyes and no sense of humour, but a most enormous sense of importance, you cannot, or you had better not, even begin to explain to her things like Potterism, or the Anti-Potter League, and still less how it is that you belong to the latter.

The twins, who had got firsts in Schools, knew this much.

Johnny improvised hastily, with innocent gray eyes on his father’s, ’It’s one of the rules that you mayn’t talk about it outside.  Anti-Propaganda League, it is, you see ... for letting other people alone....’

‘Well,’ said Mr. Potter, who was not spiteful to his children, and preferred his wife unruffled, ’we’ll let you off this time.  But you can take my word for it, it’s a silly business.  Mother and I will last a great deal longer than it does.  Because we take our stand on human nature, and you won’t destroy that with Leagues.’

Sometimes the twins were really almost afraid they wouldn’t.

‘You’re all very cryptic to-night,’ Frank said, and yawned.

Then Mrs. Potter and the girls left the dining-room, and Frank and his father discussed the disestablishment of the Church in Wales, a measure which Frank thought would be a pity, but which was advocated by the Potter press.

Johnny cracked nuts in silence.  He thought the Church insincere, a put-up job, but that dissenters were worse.  They should all be abolished, with other shams.  For a short time at Oxford he had given the Church a trial, even felt real admiration for it, under the influence of his friend Juke, and after hearing sermons from Father Waggett, Dr. Dearmer, and Canon Adderley.  But he had soon given it up, seen it wouldn’t do; the above-mentioned priests were not representative; the Church as a whole canted, was hypocritical and Potterish, and must go.