Then there were Honoria's friends. I gave a sort of list of them in Chapter II--which I am told has caused considerable offence, not by what was put _in_ but to those who were left out. But they needn't mind: if the protesters were nice people according to my standard, you may be sure Honoria knew them. But of all her friends none was dearer and closer--save her husband--than Vivie Warren--pal of pals, brave comrade of the unflinching eyes. And somehow Vivie (since she fell in love with Michael Rossiter) was ten times dearer than she had been before: she was more understanding; she had a brighter eye, a much greater sense of humour; she was tenderer; she liked children as she never had done in bygone years, and was soon adopted by the four children in Kensington Square as "Aunt Vivie" (They also--the two elder ones--had a vague remembrance of an Uncle David who had brought them toys and sweetmeats in a dim past). Aunt Vivie and Mummie used to get up the most amusing Suffrage meetings in the long, narrow garden behind the house; or they combined forces with Lady Maud Parry, and spoke in lilting contralto or mezzo-soprano (with the compliant tenor or baritone of here and there a captive man) across the two gardens. Or somehow they commandeered the Square Garden on the pretext of a vast Garden Party, at which every one talked and laughed at once over their Suffrage views. Yes: Honoria was happy then, as indeed she had been during most of her life, except when her brother died and her mother died. What did she lack for happiness? Nothing that this world can give in the opening twentieth century ... not even a very good pianola or a motor. I feel somehow it was almost unfair (in my rage at the inequality of treatment meted out by the Powers Beyond). Shall not General Sir Petworth Armstrong die in the great debacle of the world-wide War? I shall see, later. And yet I feel that this nucleus of pure happiness housed in Kensington Square--or at Petworth Manor--was to the little world that revolved round the Armstrongs like a good radiator in a cold house. It warmed many a chilly nature into fructification; it healed many a scar, it brightened many a humble life, like that of Bertie Adams's hard-working, washerwoman mother, or the game-keeper's crippled child at Petworth or the newest, suburbanest little employe of _Fraser and Claridge's_ huge establishment in the Brompton Road. It pulled straight the wayward life of some young subaltern, about to come a cropper, but who after a talk or two with that jolly Mrs. Armstrong took quite a different course and made a decent marriage. It conjoined with many of the social activities for good of one who might have been her twin sister--Suzanne Feenix--only that Suzanne was twenty years older and perhaps an inch or two shorter. Dear woman! My remembrance flashes a kiss to your astral cheek--which in reality I should never have dared to salute, so great was my awe of Colonel Armstrong's