Without another word he turned and walked swiftly down the drive. Patsey’s father neither called after him, nor did he follow; but he held his little daughter very close. That night Patsey added an extra petition to her usual prayers. It was: "Please, dear God, let the kind Radical man what carried me, get what he wants for all the other little girls." *XV* *A COUP D’ÉTAT* Roger stood at the nursery window apparently watching the driving rain, but in reality puzzling, with knit brows, over a situation he could by no means understand, although he was painfully conscious of its vague discomfort. When a small boy loves both his parents dearly, and it is gradually but most effectually brought home to him that he cannot show affection for the one without in some subtle fashion appearing to hurt the other, the said small boy finds himself in a _cul de sac_ none the less final that its walls are by no means clearly defined. Older people than Roger realise that the only way out of a _cul de sac_ is to go back the way you came; but he, having no idea how he had got there, could not do this; in fact, it was only that very morning that he awoke to the fact that he _was_ there. It was in this wise. His mother was changing the ornaments in the drawing-room—she had changed her drawing-room about once a week lately, lest it should get to look "set"—and she had moved the easel holding the big portrait of her uncle, the Dean, over to the corner by the piano. Roger assisted her, admiring her arrangement, as he admired everything about his mother, and she said, "I hope you will grow up like your uncle Ambrose, sonnie!" Roger was by no means sure that he echoed her wish. He had once visited the deanery and found the atmosphere somewhat oppressively dignified. "Why, mother dear?" he asked. "Because"—and a certain tone in her voice puzzled Roger—"he is a stainless gentleman." "I think I’d rather be like father," he said meditatively; "that would do just as well. To be a dean you’ve got to be a parson first, and I’d much rather be a soldier, like father." His mother turned her head hastily so that the child could not see her face. "You can be like your uncle in character whatever your profession; it is there I would have you resemble him." "But," interrupted Roger, "father’s a stainless gentleman too, isn’t he? And he’s much more jollier than Uncle Ambrose."