CHAPTER XII Christmas Day fell upon a Tuesday in 1911, and on the Saturday before Katherine Bush accompanied her employer, and the two dogs, down to Blissington in the motor. She had only been in one for short drives in the Bois with Lord Algy, so to tear through the frozen country was a great joy to her, although, not possessing proper wraps, she was rather cold. "You must have a fur coat, Miss Bush! I am greatly annoyed that I did not remark that you were insufficiently clad before we started. Here, crouch down under this rug--and there is an extra one at my feet you must wrap round you." Katherine was grateful. "Stirling must find you some warm garment of mine while we are at Blissington. I have no patience with idiots who deliberately take cold." Katherine agreed with her. "Do you know the English country, or are you quite a cockney girl?" she was then asked. "No, I hardly know it at all. I know Brighton, and a lot of seaside places, but we never chanced to go to the country for our holidays." "It is a wonderful place, the English country, the most beautiful in the world, I think; it will interest me immensely to hear your impressions of it; after a week you must tell me." "I shall be very pleased to do so." "We pass Windsor; you must go over it some day--it is only twenty miles from Blissington--. Are you interested in historical associations?" "Extremely--any places which are saturated with the evolution of man and nations are interesting, I think. I am afraid I would not care to go to Australia, or a new country." Lady Garribardine turned and looked at her secretary. The creature evidently had a brain, and this would be a good opportunity to draw her out. "You feel the force of tradition, then?" "Oh, yes--in everything. It acts for generations in the blood--it makes people do all sorts of things, good and bad, quite without reason." Lady Garribardine chuckled--she loved discussions. "How does it act in yourself, for instance?" "I have tried to stop its action in myself, because I saw the effects of the traditions of my class in my brothers and sisters, and how stultifying it was." "You certainly seem to have emerged from them in an extraordinary manner--how did you set about it?" Katherine thought a little and then answered deliberately. "I always wanted to know the reason why of everything and I soon felt sure that there was no such thing as chance, but that everything which happened was part of some scheme--and I always desired to be able to distinguish between appearance and reality, and I got to understand that personal emotion distorts all reality and creates appearance, and so I began to try to dissociate things from personal emotion in my judgments of them." "Yes, but how about tradition?"