On that they rested for a little while in silence. She began to realize with a gathering emotion that this matter was far more crucial than she had supposed. She had been thinking only of the reinstatement of Alice Burnet, she hadn’t yet estimated just what that overriding of Mrs. Pembrose might involve. “I don’t want to have any girl go until I have looked into her case. It’s——It’s vital.” “She says she can’t run the show unless she has some power.” Neither spoke for some seconds. She had the feeling of hopeless vexation that might come to a child that has wandered into a trap. “I thought,” she began. “These hostels——” She stopped short. Sir Isaac’s hand tightened on the arm of his chair. “I started ’em to please you,” he said. “I didn’t start ’em to please your friends.” She turned her eyes quickly to his grey up-looking face. “I didn’t start them for you and that chap Brumley to play about with,” he amplified. “And now you know about it, Elly.” The thing had found her unprepared. “As if——” she said at last. “As if!” he mocked. She stood quite still staring blankly at this unmanageable situation. He was the first to break silence. He lifted one hand and dropped it again with a dead impact on the arm of his chair. “I got the things,” he said, “and there they are. Anyhow,—they got to be run in a proper way.” She made no immediate answer. She was seeking desperately for phrases that escaped her. “Do you think,” she began at last. “Do you really think——?” He stared out of the window. He answered in tones of excessive reasonableness: “I didn’t start these hostels to be run by you and your—friend.” He gave the sentence the quality of an ultimatum, an irreducible minimum. “He’s my friend,” she explained, “only—because he does work—for the hostels.” Sir Isaac seemed for a moment to attempt to consider that. Then he relapsed upon his predetermined attitude. “God!” he exclaimed, “but I have been a fool!” She decided that that must be ignored. “I care more for those hostels than I care for anything—anything else in the world,” she told him. “I want them to work—I want them to succeed.... And then——” He listened in sceptical silence. “Mr. Brumley is nothing to me but a helper. He——How can you imagine, Isaac——? _I!_ How can you dare? To suggest——!” “Very well,” said Sir Isaac and reflected and made his old familiar sound with his teeth. “Run the hostels without him, Elly,” he propounded. “Then I’ll believe.” She perceived that suddenly she was faced by a test or a bargain. In the background of her mind the figure of Mr. Brumley, as she had seen him last, in brown and with a tie rather to one side, protested vainly. She did what she could for him on the spur of the moment. “But,” she said, “he’s so helpful. He’s so—harmless.” “That’s as may be,” said Sir Isaac and breathed heavily. “How can one suddenly turn on a friend?” “I don’t see that you ever wanted a friend,” said Sir Isaac.