After tea he recovered and talked to the Colonel and the subalterns while the rest of us listened.  He said, I remember, that the building of Dreadnoughts was of more importance to the country than Disestablishment.  And even more important than the building of Dreadnoughts was the building of submarines.  The submarine was the ship of the future.  There should be, he said, at least fifty submarines for every Dreadnought turned out.

That made them all sit up. (It was not a platitude in nineteen-six, but a prophecy.) The Colonel and the subalterns hung on his words; and when the Canon saw them hanging, his mouth began to relax a little of its own accord.  In his first hour Jevons had scored, notably.

It was as if he had said to himself, “I’ll bring these people round, see if I don’t.  I give myself an hour.”

Dinner passed without any misadventure, but you could see that he was careful.  Also you could see by his twinkle that he was amusing himself by his own precautions, as if, again, he had said to himself, “They’re all expecting me to make noises over my soup, and they’ll be disappointed.  I just won’t make any.”

We had coffee in the garden afterwards.  And it was then that the Canon asked him what his politics were?

Jevons said he had no politics.  Or rather, he had a great many politics.  He was a sort of Socialist in time of peace and a red-hot Imperialist in time of war, and a Tory for purposes of Tariff Reform, and a Liberal when it came to Home Rule.

And when the Canon objected that you couldn’t run a Government on those lines, little Jevons told him that that was precisely how Governments were run.  It was a fallacy to suppose that Oppositions didn’t rule.

And again he scored.  He did it all with a twinkling, dimpling urbanity and deprecation, as if the Canon had been a beautiful lady he was paying court to, as if he thought it was rather a pity that beauty should lower itself to talk politics; but since he insisted on politics, he should have them; as if, in short, he loved the Canon, but didn’t take him very seriously.

Yes; he certainly scored.  He gave Viola no cause to flinch.

That evening comes back to me by bits.  It must have been that evening that the Canon walked round the garden with me.  I see him walking round and round, with Norah hanging on to his arm, teasing him and chattering.  I hear her crying out suddenly with no relevance, “Hasn’t he got stunning eyes, Daddy?” and the Canon saying that Jevons’s eyes would look better in a pair of earrings than in Jevons’s head, and her answering, “Wouldn’t I like to wear them!” I see his little mock shiver (as if he felt that it was those great chunks of unsuitable sapphire that had charmed Viola across the Channel), and Norah’s funny face as she said, “Oh, come, he isn’t half bad.”

That night he called me into the library when they had all gone to bed.  Clearly he wanted to know how it had gone off—­how he, in particular, had behaved.  I assured him that his behaviour had been perfect.  And I asked him what he thought of Jevons?