"Dear Mr. Nicholas Chester, "There is a saying 'Physician, heal thyself.' There is also, in the same book (a book which, coming of clerical, even episcopal, parentage, you should be acquainted with), 'Cast out the beam which is in thine own eye, and then thou shalt see more plainly to pull out the mote which is in thy brother's eye.' We will on this occasion say no more than that we advise you to take heed to these sayings before you issue many more orders relating to matrimony and such domestic affairs. And yet a third saying, 'Can the blind lead the blind? Shall they not both fall into the ditch?' you would do well to ponder in your heart." That was all, that week. But it was enough to start speculation and talk among the _Patriot's_ readers. Next week and other weeks there were further innuendoes, and more talk. One week there was a picture of Chester with several unmistakable, but also unmistakably deficient, little Chesters clinging to his coat. This picture was called "Following the dear old dad. What we may expect to see in the near future." Mr. Percy Jenkins knew his business. And, during his interview with the Minister of Brains, he had conceived an extreme dislike towards him. 4 "He'll feel worse before I've done with him," Chester said to Kitty. They were sitting together on Kitty's sofa, with a copy of the _Patriot_ between them. Kitty was now alone in her flat, her cousin having suddenly taken it into her head to get married. "I always said it would come out," was Kitty's reply. "And now you see." "Of course I knew it would come out," Chester said calmly. "It was bound to. However, it hasn't yet. All this is mere talk. It's more offensive, but not really so serious, as the Labour attacks on the Ministry, and the _Stop It_ campaign, and the cry for a Business Government. Business Government, indeed! The last word in inept futility...." "All the same," Kitty said, rather gravely, "you and I have got to be rather more careful, Nicky. We've been careful, I think, but not enough, it seems." "There's no such thing," said Chester, who was tired, "as being careful enough, in this observant world, when one is doing wrong. You can be too careful (don't let's, by the way) but you can't be careful enough." 5 But Chester did not really see Kitty very often in these days, because he had to see and confer with so many others--the Employers' Federation, and the Doctors, and the Timber Cutters, and the Worsted Industries, and the Farmers, and the Cotton Spinners, and the Newspaper Staffs, and the Church, and the Parents, and the Ministerial Council, and the Admiralty, and the Board of Education, and the War Office, and the Ministry of Reconstruction, and the Directorate of Propaganda. And the A.S.E. It is much to be hoped that conferences are useful; if they are not, it cannot, surely, be from lack of practice.