The rogues had been dressing up. Margharita, that child of the dreadful dawn, was now a sturdy and domineering girl of eight, and she was attired in a gilt paper mitre and her governess's white muslin blouse so tied at the wrists as to suggest long sleeves, a broad crimson band doing duty as a stole. She was Becket prepared for martyrdom at the foot of the altar. Godwin, his eldest son, was a hot-tempered, pretty-featured pleasantly self-conscious boy of nearly seven and very happy now in a white dragoon's helmet and rude but effective brown paper breastplate and greaves, as the party of assassin knights. A small acolyte in what was in all human probably one of the governess's more intimate linen garments assisted Becket, while the general congregation of Canterbury was represented by Edward, aged two, and the governess, disguised with a Union Jack tied over her head after the well-known fashion of the middle ages. After the children had welcomed their father and explained the bloody work in hand, they returned to it with solemn earnestness, while Trafford surveyed the tragedy. Godwin slew with admirable gusto, and I doubt if the actual Thomas of Canterbury showed half the stately dignity of Margharita. The scene finished, they went on to the penance of Henry the Second; and there was a tremendous readjustment of costumes, with much consultation and secrecy. Trafford's eyes went from his offspring to the long, white-painted room, with its gay frieze of ships and gulls and its rug-variegated cork carpet of plain brick red. Everywhere it showed his wife's quick cleverness, the clean serviceable decorativeness of it all, the pretty patterned window curtains, the writing desks, the little library of books, the flowers and bulbs in glasses, the counting blocks and bricks and jolly toys, the blackboard on which the children learnt to draw in bold wide strokes, the big, well-chosen German colour prints upon the walls. And the children did credit to their casket; they were not only full of vitality but full of ideas, even Edward was already a person of conversation. They were good stuff anyhow.... It was fine in a sense, Trafford thought, to have given up his own motives and curiosities to afford this airy pleasantness of upbringing for them, and then came a qualifying thought. Would they in their turn for the sake of another generation have to give up fine occupations for mean occupations, deep thoughts for shallow? Would the world get them in turn? Would the girls be hustled and flattered into advantageous marriages, that dinners and drawing-rooms might still prevail? Would the boys, after this gracious beginning, presently have to swim submerged in another generation of Blenkinses and their Talk, toil in arduous self-seeking, observe, respect and manipulate shams, succeed or fail, and succeeding, beget amidst hope and beautiful emotions yet another generation doomed to insincerities and accommodations, and so die at last--as he must die?...