She tackled her father at breakfast, which, as a rule, he gobbled up in silence, thinking of the day’s work ahead. A wiser than she would have selected the postprandial hour, when Nicotina clouds the air of controversy with beneficent and soothing vapours. Quinney had mentioned curtly that he was going to attend a sale at Christopher’s. Whereupon Posy threw this bomb: "Daddy, dear, when are you going to retire from active business?" Quinney stared at his daughter. Her intelligent eyes were sparkling; in her delicately-cut nostrils titillated the dust of battle. "Retire from—business?" "Haven’t you made enough?" Susan looked frightened, but she had anticipated a conflict between two strong wills, and was acutely sensible of her own impotence to prevent it. "Ho! Now, what do you call enough, my girl?" Posy was prepared to answer this. She riposted swiftly: "Haven’t we enough to live on decently, and something to spare for others?" "We?" His voice took a sharper inflection. "How much have you laid by, missie?" The sharpness and veiled impatience of her tone matched his as she answered: "You know what I mean." "I don’t. What I’ve made is mine—my very own. I can do what I like with it." "Oh, father!" "Oh, father!" He mimicked her cleverly. "Do you have the sauce to sit there and tell me, your father, that what I’ve made isn’t mine?" Posy quoted Mrs. Honeybun with overwhelming effect. "You are a trustee for what you hold, accountable for every penny." "Accountable—to you?" He leaned forward, forgetting his bacon, which he liked frizzlingly hot. "Accountable to Society and God." "Ho! Then suppose you leave me, my young chick, to account in my own way to Society and God?" Posy blushed. Let us not label her rashly as a prig. The nymph Echo must have repeated silly remarks in her time. Posy said slowly, speaking with conviction: "I am part of Society, and I am part of what we call, for want of a better word, God." Susan murmured warningly: "That will do, Posy." "No, it won’t!" shouted Quinney. "We’ll have this out here and now. What d’ye mean? What the devil d’ye mean? Are you dotty? Why do you spring this on me? What’s the game? ’Ave you been a-listening to blasphemous agitators a-spoutin’ rubbish in ’Yde Park?" "No." "Then where does she get it from?" He appealed to Susan with frantic gestures. "You hear her, mother. Where does she get this from? Answer me!" "Such talk is in the air, Joe," Susan replied feebly. Explosions lacerated her ears. She had come to place an inordinate value upon peace and quiet. "In the air! By Gum! she’s been breathing the wrong air." Inspiration gripped and shook him. "Gosh! You got this from that dirty Socialist, Honeybun. Don’t deny it! These are his notions. But I never thought he’d poison your young mind with ’em." Posy said with dignity: