"Oh!" he said, and flourished the book. "Come! And besides--_Shaw!_" "He makes a very good case." "But he's such a--mountebank." "Does that matter? He isn't a mountebank there." "He's not sincere. I doubt if you had a serious book on Municipal Trading, Magsy, whether you'd make head or tail of it. It's a stiff subject. Shaw just gets his chance for a smart thing or so.... I'd rather you read a good novel." He really had the air of taking her reading in hand. "You think I ought not to read an intelligent book." "I think we ought to leave those things to the people who understand." "But we ought to understand." He smiled wisely. "There's a lot of things _you_ have to understand," he said, "nearer home than this." Marjorie was ablaze now. "What a silly thing to say!" she cried, with an undergraduate's freedom. "Really, you are talking nonsense! I read that book because it interests me. If I didn't, I should read something else. Do you mean to suggest that I'm reading like a child, who holds a book upside down?" She was so plainly angry that he was taken aback. "I don't mean to suggest--" he began, and turned to greet the welcome presence, the interrogative eye of Mrs. Pope. "Here we are!" he said, "having a quarrel!" "Marjorie!" said Mrs. Pope. "Oh, it's serious!" said Mr. Magnet, and added with a gleam: "It's about Municipal Trading!" Mrs. Pope knew the wicked little flicker in Marjorie's eye better than Mr. Magnet. She had known it from the nursery, and yet she had never quite mastered its meaning. She had never yet realized it was Marjorie, she had always regarded it as something Marjorie, some other Marjorie, ought to keep under control. So now she adopted a pacificatory tone. "Oh! lovers' quarrels," she said, floating over the occasion. "Lovers' quarrels. You mustn't ask _me_ to interfere!" Marjorie, already a little ashamed of her heat, thought for an instant she ought to stand that, and then decided abruptly with a return to choler that she would not do so. She stood up, and held out her hand for her book. "Mr. Magnet," she said to her mother with remarkable force and freedom as she took it, "has been talking unutterable nonsense. I don't call that a lovers' quarrel--anyhow." Then, confronted with a double astonishment, and having no more to say, she picked up her skirt quite unnecessarily, and walked with a heavenward chin indoors. "I'm afraid," explained Mr. Magnet, "I was a little too free with one of Magsy's favourite authors." "Which is the favourite author now?" asked Mrs. Pope, after a reflective pause, with a mother's indulgent smile. "Shaw." He raised amused eyebrows. "It's just the age, I suppose." "She's frightfully loyal while it lasts," said Mrs. Pope. "No one dare say a word against them." "I think it's adorable of her," said Mr. Magnet--with an answering loyalty and gusto. § 2