Her hands were busy now putting decorative stitches into a frock for John.  She had pushed aside a novel by George Moore and a volume of Ibsen’s plays.  She disliked Ibsen and disapproved of George Moore.  Her firm, tight little character defended itself against every form of intellectual disturbance.  A copy of the Times had fallen from her lap to her feet.  Jane, the cat, had found it there, and, purring loudly, had trodden it down into a bed, and now lay on it, asleep.  Frances had informed herself of the affairs of the nation.

At the bottom of her mind was the conviction (profound, because unconscious) that the affairs of the nation were not to be compared for interest with her own affairs, and an attitude of condescension, as if she honoured the Times by reading it and the nation by informing herself of its affairs; also the very distinct impression that evening papers were more attractive than morning papers.  She would have admitted that they owed their attraction to the circumstance that Anthony brought them home with him in his pocket, and that in the evening she was not obliged to inform herself of what might be happening.  Anthony was certain to inform her.

Not that anything ever did happen.  Except strikes; and even then, no sooner did the features of the strike begin to get dramatic than they were instantly submerged in the flood of conversation that was let loose over them.  Mrs. Anthony pitied the poor editors and reporters while Parliament was sitting.  She saw them as rather silly, violent and desperate men, yet pathetic in their silliness, violence and desperation, snatching at divorces, and breach of promise cases, and fires in paraffin shops, as drowning men snatch at straws.

Her imagination refused to picture any end to this state of things.  There would just be more speeches and more strikes, and still more speeches, going on for ever and ever at home; while foreign affairs and the British Empire went on for ever and ever too, with no connection between the two lines of sequence, and no likeness, except that both somehow went on and on.

That was Anthony’s view of England’s parliament and of her imperial policy; and it was Mrs. Anthony’s.  Politics, Anthony said, had become static; and he assured Frances that there was no likelihood that they would ever become dynamic again—­ever.

Anthony’s view of politics was Mrs. Anthony’s view of life.

Nothing ever really happened.  Things did not change; they endured; they went on.  At least everything that really mattered endured and went on.  So that everything that really mattered could—­if you were given to looking forward—­be foreseen.  A strike—­a really bad one—­might conceivably affect Anthony’s business, for a time; but not all the strikes in the world, not all the silly speeches, not all the meddling and muddling of politicians could ever touch one of those enduring things.