"That's just what hurts most--to have her misjudged. When one knows ... it's _Mother_!--that she _couldn't_ stoop..." The hot blood surged up into her face. "To think that people can say nasty, mean things--that she gives them the chance! It makes me wild. And Mother all the time doesn't see it a bit. She thinks because it's _her_" (vehemence ousted grammar) "that everyone must know it's bound to be all right. And she goes to all sorts of places, lecturing, you know, and takes Stephen with her and stays away for days. Only yesterday"--her words poured on--"Aunt Elizabeth came to tea and the first thing she said was: 'I hear you were at Folkestone, staying at the Grand?--_and_ Mr. Somerville?' And Mother answered calmly: 'Yes--I took Stephen. He's such a help, you know. I couldn't do without him.' And Aunt Elizabeth gave such a nasty little laugh and said--'Really, Mary, I think _I_ must get a Stephen!' "But Mother didn't see it." She gave an impatient sigh. "She's a law unto herself," McTaggart suggested. "I vote we drown Stephen. Some dark night--in the Regent's Park Canal. And here it is; let's choose the spot." He paused as he spoke on the little iron bridge that spans the narrow stream, where the barges come and go; slowly drifting along the still line of water, a mute protest against the feverish haste of the age. "The worst of it is," said Jill, ignoring his suggestion to remove the enemy into a better world, "that Stephen eggs her on in all this militant work. And Mother isn't strong; she's not fit for it. Why, last year she was ill for weeks after that trouble when the windows were smashed in Regent Street. And her name was in the papers. Roddy got so ragged. All the boys at school were pulling his leg. And he's so proud of Mother!--it nearly broke his heart--to think of her being taken off to a common police station. Why! ..." She stopped short, leaning over the bridge,--"There he is, on the foot path, with his fishing rod." She put her hands to her mouth and called in her clear voice, "Rod-dy!" "Hullo!" came an answering hail. "You up there, Jill?" There came a scrambling in the bushes that fringed the waterway, and, with a noise of snapping twigs at the summit of the bank, a leg and an arm shot out, then a laughing boy's face, with a great black smudge neatly bisecting it. "Hullo, Peter!" The pair shook hands. "Had any sport?" said McTaggart gravely. "No such luck," replied that ardent fisherman. "I wonder what the time is?--it _feels_ like lunch." "You'd better cut home and wash"--his sister smiled at him--"You look as if you'd spent the morning sweeping chimneys." "I think I'll slip in with you," the schoolboy winked, "there's a new cook to-day and I'm warned off the area. Stephen's about." He tucked a hand through her arm, and the three moved on over the bridge. "Look here, old girl, you're coming to the Zoo? Half past two sharp. I've bought a bag of nuts."