Page:The council of seven.djvu/125

 allowance made for the march of progress for any woman to be actively engaged in earning her own living was to place her in the governess category if not actually to consign her to the lower depths with Mossop the butler, and his highly trained subordinates, Charles and John.

Had Helen been less troubled in spirit, a keen sense of humor would have been frankly charmed by this almost perfect specimen from the backwoods. John himself always alluded to his mother as "a genuine Die-hard." It was her austere, yet not altogether unenlightened feudalism, he declared, that had made England the country it was. Cherishing her as he did, and the wonderful old island of which she was the flesh and the bone, he certainly claimed for her many fine qualities. She was honest, she was wise in her own generation, she was fearless, she had a downright way of expressing herself, and according to her lights, she was just. All the same, her limitations were many and they were abrupt.

Charm, beauty, information, wit, Helen had her share of these and she used them modestly, but so far as John's mother was concerned, they made no impact. From his early days at Eton she had mapped out a matrimonial career for her only surviving son. Money he would need and money he should have, even if he must go outside his own class to look for it. No doubt some well-born heiress would come along—Lady Elizabeth might despair of the country but she was an in