“We’ll all go second,” said Ramage, “if we may?”

Mr. Stanley wanted to object strongly, but as he could not immediately think how to put it, he contented himself with a grunt, and the motion was carried.  “How’s Mrs. Ramage?” he asked.

“Very much as usual,” said Ramage.  “She finds lying up so much very irksome.  But, you see, she has to lie up.”

The topic of his invalid wife bored him, and he turned at once to Ann Veronica.  “And where are you going?” he said.  “Are you going on again this winter with that scientific work of yours?  It’s an instance of heredity, I suppose.”  For a moment Mr. Stanley almost liked Ramage.  “You’re a biologist, aren’t you?”

He began to talk of his own impressions of biology as a commonplace magazine reader who had to get what he could from the monthly reviews, and was glad to meet with any information from nearer the fountainhead.  In a little while he and she were talking quite easily and agreeably.  They went on talking in the train—­it seemed to her father a slight want of deference to him—­and he listened and pretended to read the Times.  He was struck disagreeably by Ramage’s air of gallant consideration and Ann Veronica’s self-possessed answers.  These things did not harmonize with his conception of the forthcoming (if unavoidable) interview.  After all, it came to him suddenly as a harsh discovery that she might be in a sense regarded as grownup.  He was a man who in all things classified without nuance, and for him there were in the matter of age just two feminine classes and no more—­girls and women.  The distinction lay chiefly in the right to pat their heads.  But here was a girl—­she must be a girl, since she was his daughter and pat-able—­imitating the woman quite remarkably and cleverly.  He resumed his listening.  She was discussing one of those modern advanced plays with a remarkable, with an extraordinary, confidence.

“His love-making,” she remarked, “struck me as unconvincing.  He seemed too noisy.”

The full significance of her words did not instantly appear to him.  Then it dawned.  Good heavens!  She was discussing love-making.  For a time he heard no more, and stared with stony eyes at a Book-War proclamation in leaded type that filled half a column of the Times that day.  Could she understand what she was talking about?  Luckily it was a second-class carriage and the ordinary fellow-travellers were not there.  Everybody, he felt, must be listening behind their papers.

Of course, girls repeat phrases and opinions of which they cannot possibly understand the meaning.  But a middle-aged man like Ramage ought to know better than to draw out a girl, the daughter of a friend and neighbor....

Well, after all, he seemed to be turning the subject.  “Broddick is a heavy man,” he was saying, “and the main interest of the play was the embezzlement.”  Thank Heaven!  Mr. Stanley allowed his paper to drop a little, and scrutinized the hats and brows of their three fellow-travellers.