Winner Stories

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leave of his Scottish home, and always he bore that flintlike
face, that look of strong endurance and repressed passion which
Elspeth had described, and which, in times of trouble and
injustice, Erica had learned to know so well.
The blank of amaze of your haughty gaze,
The cold surprise of patrician eyes. Lewis Morris
But the paucity of Christians is astonishing, considering the
number of them. Leigh Hunt.
The irritation, or, at any rate, the novelty of the luxury in the
FaneSmith's household wore off after Erica had spent a few days at
Greyshot. She became accustomed to the great rooms, and being
artistic by nature and the reverse by education, she began very
much to enjoy the pictures, the charming variety of foreign
treasures, and particularly all the lovely things of Indian
workmanship with which the drawing room was crowded. The long,
formal meals she learned to endure. The absurdly large retinue of
servants ceased to oppress her; she used to amuse herself by
speculating as to the political views of the menservants! while
the luxury of a daily drive with her aunt she very much
appreciated.
But, though the mere externals were soon familiar enough, she found
that every day increased the difficulty she felt in becoming
accustomed to the atmosphere of this family. She had lived all her
life with people who were overwhelmed with work, and in a home
where recreation was only the rare concession to actual health.
Here recreation seemed to be the business of life, while work for
the public was merely tacked on as a sort of ornamental fringe.
Mr. FaneSmith had, indeed, a few committee meetings to attend;
Mrs. FaneSmith visited her district once a fortnight, and
distributed tracts, and kind words, and soup tickets, and blanket
tickets, besides the most lavish gifts from her own purse. Rose,
to please her mother, taught a class of little girls on Sunday
afternoon that is to say, she did NOT teach them, but she sat in a
chair and heard them say collects, and enforced orderly behavior
upon them, and read them a good little story book. But these were
merely rather tiresome duties which came in very often as provoking
interruptions to the great business of life, namely eating,
drinking, dining out, giving dinners, or attending the endless
succession of athomes, dances, musical evenings, amateur
theatricals, by which Greyshot people tried to kill time.
As to taking any intelligent interest in the political world, no
one seemed to dream of such a thing, except Mr. FaneSmith, who
read the paper at breakfast, and hurled anathemas at all the
statesmen whom Erica had learned to love and revere. It taxed her
patience to the utmost to sit through the daily diatribe against

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