Honoria by this time—­the close of 1909—­was the mother of four lovely, healthy, happy children.  She would give birth to a fifth the following June (1910), and then perhaps she would stop.  She often said about this time—­touching wood as she did so—­“could any woman be happier?” She was so happy that she believed in God, went sometimes to St. Mary Abbott’s or St. Paul’s, Knightsbridge—­the music was so jolly—­and gave largely to cheerful charities as well as to the Suffrage Cause.  She would in the approach to Christmas, 1909, look round and survey her happiness:  could any one have a more satisfactory husband?  Of course he was a man and had silly mannish prejudices, but then without them he would not be so lovable.  Her children—­two boys and two girls—­could you find greater darlings if you spent a week among the well-bred childern playing round the Round Pond?  Such natural children with really original remarks and untrained ideas; not artificial Peter Pans who wistfully didn’t want to grow up; not slavish little mimics of the Children’s stories in vogue, pretending to play at Red Indians—­when every one knew that Red Indians nowadays dressed like all the other citizens of the United States and Canada and sat in Congress and cultivated political “pulls” or sold patent medicines; or who said “Good hunting” and other Mowgli shibboleths to mystified relations from the mid-nineteenth century country towns; nor children who teased the cat or interfered with the cook or stole jam or did anything else that was obsolete; or decried Sullivan’s music in favour of Debussy’s or of Scarlatini’s 17th century tiraliras; or wore spectacles and had to have their front teeth in gold clamps.  Just clear-eyed, good-tempered, good-looking, roguish and spontaneously natural and reasonably self-willed children, who adored their parents and did not openly mock at the Elishas that called on them.

Then there were Honoria’s friends.  I gave a sort of list of them in Chapter II—­which I am told has caused considerable offence, not by what was put in but to those who were left out.  But they needn’t mind:  if the protesters were nice people according to my standard, you may be sure Honoria knew them.  But of all her friends none was dearer and closer—­save her husband—­than Vivie Warren—­pal of pals, brave comrade of the unflinching eyes.  And somehow Vivie (since she fell in love with Michael Rossiter) was ten times dearer than she had been before:  she was more understanding; she had a brighter eye, a much greater sense of humour; she was tenderer; she liked children as she never had done in bygone years, and was soon adopted by the four children in Kensington Square as “Aunt Vivie” (They also—­the two elder ones—­had a vague remembrance of an Uncle David who had brought them toys and sweetmeats in a dim past).  Aunt Vivie and Mummie used to get up the most amusing Suffrage meetings in the long, narrow garden behind the house; or they combined forces with Lady Maud Parry, and spoke in lilting contralto or mezzo-soprano (with the compliant tenor or baritone of here and there a captive man) across the two gardens.  Or somehow they commandeered the Square Garden on the pretext of a vast Garden Party, at which every one talked and laughed at once over their Suffrage views.