"No--no, thanks Tod, I don't want any." "None of us do--the swine!" said Tod fiercely. John followed him into the drawing-room. "Has Mrs. Graham gone to her room, John?" asked Mrs. Vernley. He nodded. "I must go up to her--poor thing," she said. Muriel, in distraction, had lifted the piano lid and struck a chord. "For God's sake! Don't play that now! Oh hell!" cried Tod. Then seeing the reproach in his mother's eyes, "I beg your pardon, Mother--but I could murder some one! Come on, boys--I'm going to the garage." Bobbie and John followed with alacrity. Mrs. Graham did not appear at dinner. She kept to her room, and there was a cloud over the party throughout the evening, despite Mr. Ribble's delicious sallies of humour, and a fascinating discussion in the library afterwards between him and Mr. Vernley on Proportional Representation, a discussion very tedious to Tod and Bobbie, who slipped away into the billiard room after vehement signals to John to follow, which he ignored. He absorbed every detail, eager for a political education, and very occasionally he ventured to ask a question, which Mr. Ribble answered fully and seriously as though John had been a grown-up person. Here was a new theme for the debating society! So he sat, listening until the clock struck eleven, and Mr. Vernley and Mr. Ribble lapsed into a silence filled with tobacco smoke, whereon John rose and said good night. He found Bobbie perched on the edge of his bed, pulling off a sock. "Good Lord!" was the greeting. "Have you been in the library all the time?" "Yes--isn't Mr. Ribble a wonderful man?" "They say so," assented Vernley, "but I always want to yawn when he and the pater get going. It is an awful business having to live in a house where M.P.s are always about. They talk for ever about things nobody would give a brass button for." "But surely the method of government--" began John. "My dear old Scissors--what does it matter how we are governed so long as we are left alone? Judging from those fellows who come down here, you'd think the universe would cease to revolve if they went out of office, and when they do go nobody would know, if it weren't for their own newspapers which lament so over 'em. And it's all a game. I've heard these fellows abuse one another, and use the vilest terms, and, Lord bless us, they're playing bridge or golf together the next day." "But that reveals our sporting instinct." "That's not yours, Scissors. It's the pater's, I recognise it--he always quotes that when he throws over what he said the night before about a man." Then ploughing his hands through his thick ruffled hair, "Lord, what a mess!" he exclaimed. "What, politics?" "No--that filthy Crimp and Mrs. Graham." John started; in his selfish interest he had forgotten the incident.