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 Cornwall with Lesbia Newman; how lucky she is to escape from horrid London! What a nuisance an autumn session is!’

‘I suppose you’d like to go to Ireland itself, Fri, if your precious Lesbia were there,’ said her sister snappishly. ‘The country may go to the dogs, so long as you and your inseparable can moon about together.’

‘It may do that in any case, Hillie,’ she answered; ‘my staying in town will not prevent it.’

‘Oh, come, Friga,’ said her mother, ‘don’t you begin to croak, for Heaven’s sake! or we shall all be in the dumps. There’s reason for your father being annoyed, but your griefs are ridiculous.’

‘The Lord knows what will happen if Redhill should be overpowered,’ said the Marquis gloomily. ‘We sha’n’t hold Ireland, that’s certain; and I don’t want to frighten you, but we shall have our work cut out for us to hold England. The war must be stopped, or I shall throw up the sponge, and let a better man take my place. What the deuce possessed us to get into such a mess I can’t think!’

‘The Thoroughs wanted to keep us out of it,’ remarked Friga, who was not in an amiable mood; ‘but that, no doubt, would have been undignified for a Bungling Coalition.’

‘But, Fri, dear,’ remonstrated her mother, ‘all women of caste are Bunglers.’

‘I doubt it,’ she replied; ‘but even then, it is one thing to be a Bungler because one has thought out the subject and reached that conclusion, as papa has; quite another to be a Bungler simply because that sweet thing in Guardsmen, young Silverton, is a Bungler, and one admires his moustache.’

‘What nonsense you talk, Friga!’ said her mother, while Hilda, at whom the taunt was levelled, laughed. ‘As if