none, Oh! she had a vast fund of ordinary commonsense.  Of that I can assure you.  A bit of hard brain fibre from her father had counteracted any over-sentimental folly in the maternal heritage.  And she came back from school a very ladylike little person.  If pressed, she could reel off all kinds of artificial scraps of knowledge, like a dear little parrot.  But she had never heard of Karl Marx and didn’t want to hear.  She had a vague notion that International Socialism was a movement in favour of throwing bombs at monarchs and of seizing the wealth of the rich in order to divide it among the poor—­and she regarded it as abominable.  When her father gave her Fabian Society tracts to read, he might just as well, for all her understanding of the argument, set her down to a Treatise on the Infinitesimal Calculus.  Her brain stood blank before such abstract disquisitions.  She loved easily comprehended poetry and novels that made her laugh or cry and set her mind dancing round the glowing possibilities of life; all disastrous stuff abhorred by the International Socialist, to whom the essential problems of existence are of no interest whatever.  So, after a few futile attempts to darken her mind, Gedge put her down as a mere fool woman, and ceased to bother his head about her intellectual development.  That came to him quite naturally.  There is no Turk more contemptuous of his womankind’s political ideas than the Gedges of our enlightened England.  But on other counts she was a distinct asset.  He regarded her with immense pride, as a more ornamental adjunct to his house than any other county builder and contractor could display, and, recognising that she was possessed of some low feminine cunning in the way of adding up figures and writing letters, made use of her in his office as general clerical factotum.

When the war broke out, he discovered, to his horror, that Phyllis actually had political ideas—­unshakable, obstinate ideas opposed to his own—­and that he had been nourishing in his bosom a viperous patriot.  Phyllis, for her part, realised with equal horror the practical significance of her father’s windy theories.  When Randall, who had stolen her heart, took to visiting the house, in order, as far as she could make out, to talk treason with her father, the strain of the situation grew more than she could bear.  She fled to Betty for advice.  Betty promptly stepped in and whisked her off to the hospital.

It was on the morning on which Randall interviewed me in the garden, the morning after he had broken with Gedge that Phyllis, having a little off-time, went home.  She found her father in the office making out a few bills.  He thrust forward his long chin and aggressive beard and scowled at her.

“Oh, it’s you, is it?  Come at last where your duty calls you, eh?”

“I always come when I can, father,” she replied.

She bent down and kissed his cheek.  He caught her roughly round the waist and, leaning back in his chair, looked up at her sourly.