and adored his “sweet, pretty little children.”  “If you’ll let ’em sleep in the spare room on the fourth floor, next their mother, and play in the day-time in the servants’ ’all, they’ll be no manner of difficulty nor bother to me and the maids.  We shall love to ’ave ’em, the darlin’s.  And they’ll serve to cheer you up a bit ma’am till the Professor comes back.”

Mrs. Adams was a very capable person who hated dust and grime.  The big house wanted some such intervention, as since the butler’s departure it had become rather slovenly, save in the portions occupied by Mrs. Rossiter.  Charwomen were got in, and spring cleanings on a gigantic scale took place, so that when Rossiter did return he thought it had never looked so nice, or his Linda been so cheery and companionable.

But before this happy confirmation of her wisdom in engaging Nance Adams as maid and factotum, Mrs. Rossiter had several waves of doubt and distress to breast.  There was the Suffrage question.  Once converted by Mrs. Humphry Ward, Miss Violet Markham, Sir Almroth Wright—­whose prenom she could not pronounce—­the late Lord Cromer, and the impressive Lord Curzon, to the perils of the Woman’s Vote, Mrs. Rossiter was hard to move from her uncompromising opposition to the enfranchisement of her sex.  Some adroit champion of the Wrong had employed the argument that once Women got the vote, the Divorce Laws would be greatly enlarged.  This would be part of the scheme of the wild women to get themselves all married; that and the legalisation of Polygamy which would follow the Vote as surely as the night the day.  Linda had an undefined terror that her Michael might take advantage of such licentiousness to depose her, like the Empress Josephine was put aside in favour of a child-producing rival; or if polygamy came into force, that Miss Warren might lawfully share the Professor’s affections.

She was therefore greatly perturbed in the course of 1916 at the sudden throwing up of the sponge by the Anti-suffragists.  However, there it was.  The long struggle drew to a victorious close.  Example as well as precept pointed to what women could do and were worth; sound arguments followed the inconveniences of militancy, and the men were convinced.  Or rather, the men in the mass and the fighting, working men had for some time been convinced, but the great statesmen who had so obstinately opposed the measures were now weakening at the knees before the results of their own mismanagement in the conduct of the War.

A further perplexity and anxiety for Mrs. Rossiter arose over the German spy mania.  She had been to one of Lady Towcester’s afternoon parties “to keep up our spirits.”  Lady Towcester collected for at least six different charities and funds, and Mrs. Rossiter was a generous subscriber to all six.  Touching the wood of the central tea-table, she had remarked to Lady Victoria and Lady Helen Freebooter how fortunate they (who lived within the prescribed area defined by Lady Jeune) had been in so far escaping air-raids.