“No, minx,” he rebuked her, “I haven’t. I’m not troubling to wade through the housemaid’s evidence for the very good reason that it’s quite unnecessary. I shall hear all about it from you.” “That’s a nasty one,” Phillida commented, rubbing her cheek against her father’s. She turned the paper idly, reading out the headlines. “‘American elections—Surprises at Newmarket—Bank Rate’—There doesn’t seem much news except the housemaid and the colonel, does there?” Rathbone laughed as he pinched her cheek and pointed—to a headline here and a headline there, to a cloud that was not yet the size of a man’s hand. “It depends on what you call news. It seems to have escaped you that we’ve just had a Budget. That matters to those of us who keep expensive daughters. And, little as the subject may interest you, I gather from the size of his type, that the editor attaches some importance to the fact that the Court of Arbitration has decided against the Karthanian claim. That, of course, compared to a housemaid in the witness-box is——” “Ponderous,” she finished and laughed across at Theodore. “Important, no doubt, but ponderous—the Court of Arbitration always is. That’s why I skipped it.” ... Then, carelessly interested, and running her eye down the columns of the newspaper, she supposed the decision was final and those noisy little Karthanians would have to be quiet at last. Rathbone shrugged his shoulders and hoped so. “But they’ll have to, won’t they?” said Phillida. “Give me a match, Daddy—There’s no higher authority than the Court of Arbitration, is there?” “If,” Rathbone suggested as he held a light to her cigarette, “if your newspaper reading were not limited to scandals and chiffons, you might have noticed that your noisy little friends in the East have declared with their customary vehemence that in no circumstances whatever will they accept an adverse verdict—not even from the Court of Arbitration.” “But they’ll have to, won’t they?” Phillida repeated placidly. “I mean—they can’t go against everybody else. Against the League.”