her the reason at the next elocution lesson, and Rosalind said calmly, that it was because at that moment she had given her second-best ankle a twist. Lady Frances brought to Erb an invitation that flattered him. Her uncle, of Queen Anne’s Mansions, a man in most of the money-making schemes of London, but one never anxious to obtrude his own name or his own personality, felt desirous of starting a movement for (to give the full Christian names) “The Anglicising of Foreign Manufactures.” This Lady Frances explained to him, with her usual vivacity, the while both kept an eye on some noisy Bermondsey infants, who were playing in the hall of the Board School. “Other countries are getting ahead of us, my uncle says, and unless something is done at once, British trade (Now, children, do play without quarrelling, please, to oblige me!), British trade will go down, and down, and down, and there will be nothing left.” “Are things really so bad?” “Oh, they’re terrible,” declared Lady Frances, with great cheerfulness. “Apparently the bed-rock has almost been reached, and it is only by a great and a unanimous effort that Great Britain will ever again be enabled to get its head above water. So, at any rate, my uncle tells me.” “I don’t know—(Young Tommy Gibbons, if I catch you at that again you know what will happen)—I don’t know that I’ve ever studied the subject in the large. My own society takes up nearly all my time, and other work I leave to other people.” “Exactly, Mr. Barnes, exactly! I quite understand your position. But I have such faith in my uncle. Do you know that nearly everything he touches turns into money.” “Very agreeable gift.” “But the point is this, that nothing can be done unless capital and labour work in unison for a common end. One is affected quite as much as the other, and alone neither can do anything. British trades are being snapped up by America, by France, by Germany, even by Belgium, the only remedy, my uncle says, is for us to take some of their manufactures and plant them here.—(I was sure you’d fall down and hurt your knee, little boy. Come here and let me kiss the place and make it well)—I don’t know whether I make myself quite plain to you, Mr. Barnes?” “In one sense you do,” said Erb. “Only thing I can’t see is, where your uncle imagines that I come in.” A dispute between two children over a doll necessitated interference, based on the judgment of Solomon. “Obviously,” replied the girl, delighted at the importance of her task, “obviously, your work will be to organise.” “Organise what?” “Meetings of working men to take up the idea, discussion in the halfpenny papers, argument in workshops. In this way,” she said, with her engaging frankness, “in this way, you see, you could strengthen my uncle’s hands.” “Not sure that that is the one desire of my life.” “I am so clumsy,” deplored Lady Frances. “Not more than most people.”