Frances Freeland, who during Felix’s long speech had almost closed her eyes, opened them, and looked piercingly at the top of his head.

“Darling,” she said, “I’ve got the very thing for it.  You must take some with you when you go tonight.  John is going to try it.”

Checked in the flow of his philosophy, Felix blinked like an owl surprised.

“Mother,” he said, “You only have the gift of keeping young.”

“Oh! my dear, I’m getting dreadfully old.  I have the greatest difficulty in keeping awake sometimes when people are talking.  But I mean to fight against it.  It’s so dreadfully rude, and ugly, too; I catch myself sometimes with my mouth open.”

Flora said quietly:  “Granny, I have the very best thing for that—­quite new!”

A sweet but rather rueful smile passed over Frances Freeland’s face.  “Now,” she said, “you’re chaffing me,” and her eyes looked loving.

It is doubtful if John understood the drift of Felix’s exordium, it is doubtful if he had quite listened—­he having so much to not listen to at the Home Office that the practice was growing on him.  A vested interest to John was a vested interest, culture was culture, and security was certainly security—­none of them were symbols of age.  Further, the social question—­at least so far as it had to do with outbreaks of youth and enthusiasm—­was too familiar to him to have any general significance whatever.  What with women, labor people, and the rest of it, he had no time for philosophy—­a dubious process at the best.  A man who had to get through so many daily hours of real work did not dissipate his energy in speculation.  But, though he had not listened to Felix’s remarks, they had ruffled him.  There is no philosophy quite so irritating as that of a brother!  True, no doubt, that the country was in a bad way, but as to vested interests and security, that was all nonsense!  The guilty causes were free thought and industrialism.

Having seen them all off to Hampstead, he gave his mother her good-night kiss.  He was proud of her, a wonderful woman, who always put a good face on everything!  Even her funny way of always having some new thing or other to do you good—­even that was all part of her wanting to make the best of things.  She never lost her ‘form’!

John worshipped that kind of stoicism which would die with its head up rather than live with its tail down.  Perhaps the moment of which he was most proud in all his life was that, when, at the finish of his school mile, he overheard a vulgar bandsman say:  “I like that young——­’s running; he breathes through his——­nose.”  At that moment, if he had stooped to breathe through his mouth, he must have won; as it was he had lost in great distress and perfect form.