"Jack," she began, a little breathlessly, "I'm sorry I was cross last night."
Her husband was sitting with his back to the door. Possibly if he had seen her face—flushed and appealing under its soft hat of grey suède—he might have acted a little more helpfully than he did. He merely laid down his newspaper and remarked cheerfully—
"That is all right, dear. Let us say no more about it. Sit down to your breakfast before it gets colder. You must have been for a long walk. Fried sole or a sausage?"
He rose and helped her to food from the sideboard, as promptly and carefully as if she had been a newly arrived and important guest. It was something; but compared with what he might have done it was nothing. In effect, Daphne had asked for a kiss and had been given a sausage.
It was rather a miserable breakfast. Daphne had vowed to herself not to be angry again: consequently she could only mope. Juggernaut continued to read the newspaper. The political world was in a ferment at the moment. There was a promise for him in all this of work—trouble—the facing of difficulties—the overcoming of strenuous opposition—the joy of battle, in fact. Manlike, he overlooked the trouble that was brewing at his own fireside.
Presently he put down his newspaper and strolled to the open window.
"What a gorgeous day, Daphne. And I have to spend it in a committee-room at Kilchester!"
"Anything important?" asked Daphne, determined to be interested.
"Important? I should just think it was, only people refuse to realise the fact. It's a meeting of the County Territorial Association. What humbug the whole business is! They started the old Volunteers, coddled them, asked nothing of them but a few drills and an annual picnic in camp, and then laughed them out of existence for Saturday-afternoon soldiers. Now they start the Territorials and go to the other extreme. They require of a man that he shall attain, free gratis and for nothing, at the sacrifice of the few scanty weeks which he gets by way of holiday, to practically the same standard of efficiency as a regular soldier, who is paid for it and gets the whole year to do it in. And then they blame us, the County Associations, because we can't find recruits for them! Luckily, we shall have compulsory service soon, and that will end the farce once and for all."
Daphne liked to be talked to like this. In the first place, it removed the uncomfortable and humiliating sensation that she was a child in her husband's eyes; and in the second, it adjusted her sense of proportion as regards the male sex. Obviously, with all these dull but weighty matters to occupy him, a man could not be expected to set such store by conjugal unity as his wife, who had little else to think of.