"America! The very thing!" In the baggy dressing-gown Julian had twisted the upper part of his thin body sidewise, leaning towards the messenger.
"The trouble is," she began in a lower voice, and then hesitated.
"What's the matter?" His impatience made him irritable. "You aren't so silly as to suppose we can't say what we like before Gavan and my mother?"
"No, oh, no," she answered with a haste that convicted her. "I was just going to tell you Mr. Norfolk seems to think"--and for all Julian's assurance and her own acceptance of it, her voice sank--"the mails aren't safe."
"Not any more. Mr. Norfolk says there's a--a supervision already."
"A secret censorship! Hah! Hear that?" he challenged his friend. "That's what your policy's come to!"
"What makes Norfolk think--" Gavan began at his calmest.
"He doesn't think. He knows." There was a little pause. "Things don't get through. And the things that don't get through, they're always, he says, things of a certain kind." She broke the strain of the next few moments' silence. "I said if they didn't trust the mails why shouldn't Mr. Norfolk take his book over along with your 'League of Nations Manifesto' that they're all so wanting to get into President Wilson's hands. They asked me what I thought the inspectors would be doing while Mr. Norfolk was walking about with contraband literature under his arm. Did you ever hear such an excuse? I said: 'Do you think the inspectors would stop you? Well, the inspectors wouldn't stop _me_!' Yes," she added in a slightly offended tone, "they laughed, too. I didn't mind that so much as to see them accepting the--interference, and just sitting there. Talking! It made me wild. 'Do you really _want_ to get that into the President's hands?' I asked them. 'Very well. You give it to me.'"
"You'd take it!" The involuntary exclamation slipped over Gavan's lips.
"Not at all," said Miss Nan, with flushed dignity. "And, anyhow, Mr. Norfolk won't trust me with his precious book. 'Let me take Mr. Grant's "Manifesto," then,' I said. But they seemed to think the 'Manifesto' was still more what they called 'inflammable material at this juncture.' 'It would be better for you to be found with a bomb in your trunk,' they said."