There was also, I need hardly say, a joke against Mrs. Freeland. Herself the most temperate of women, she had lately been presented with an Aberdeen terrier named Whisky. Like all Aberdeens, he was just a mass of original sin, and naturally the last thing he would do on a walk was to keep near his mistress. The result was, as Jocelyn informed me with the keenest zest, that the neighbourhood had suddenly become painfully aware of Mrs. Freeland's repeated calls for whisky, ranging from the pathetic to the urgent, and was drawing its conclusions accordingly. "Yes," said Joan, "poor father, the dipsomaniac's husband!" I hope to see more of the Freelands, for life goes very easily among them, and it is amusing to be among so many fresh, unsophisticated young things, growing like grass upon the weir. It is one of those families where the skeleton seems never to leave the cupboard, and it is tonic to visit these now and then. Very different from the houses where it is the family that lives in the cupboard and one meets only the skeleton. Spanton as a lover differs radically from Dollie Heathcote. Dollie lets his Ann go her own way and rather admires her for it; but Spanton is the influencing moulding type. The last infirmity of modern man, some one has said, is to force women to give up their sex; and Spanton is indulging it. His one idea is to make his Nancy not only a man, but another Spanton. He controls her. He arranges both her clothes and her reading. Being only an ordinary English girl, with no experience and a great joy and pride in being engaged, she has fallen in with his every suggestion, to the great disgust of her sisters. Gradually and surely she is ceasing to have any common ground with them; which is of course very foolish, for Spanton is not making her better, but merely different. Her Spantonisms are only veneer; the sound Freeland stock remains, and will remain underneath, although for the time being it is invisible. "When half-gods go the gods arrive," says the poet. But it isn't generally true. More accurate would it be to say, "When gods arrive the half-gods go." That is a phenomenon which most families have witnessed and the Freeland family are witnessing now. Before the advent of the god Spanton, Nancy had been loyal to her sisters' and their friends' enthusiasms. She had had local heroes too--this cricketer, that tennis-player. But Spanton, although he may not be so proficient, has the only right way of behaving at these games, or else he despises them; while when it comes to the arts, he leads by lengths. Nancy used, for example, to be rather keen on musical comedy; but Spanton being all for Shaw, farewell to Gertie Millar. Nancy used to go to the Academy every May and revel in it; but Spanton believing only in the New Englishmen, farewell to the Hon. John Collier. And so it is, all over this little island. CHAPTER XI