nd of conventional, good-humoured scorn that girls and women
put on when men talk of babies. They do it (one believes) partly because
they feel it is a subject they know about, and partly to pander to men's
desire that they should do it. It is part of the pretty play between the
sexes. Jane never did it; she wasn't feminine enough. And Gideon did not
want her to do it; he thought it silly.

'Why do you hope so?' asked Gideon. 'And why do girls like it?'

The first question was to Clare, the second to Jane, because he knew that
Clare would not be able to answer it.

'The mites!' said Clare. 'Who _wouldn't_ like it?'

Gideon sighed a little, Clare tried him. She had an amorphous mind. But
Jane threw up at him, as she enveloped Charles in the towel, 'I'll try
and think it out some time, Arthur. I haven't time now.... There's a
reason all right.... The powder, Clare.'

Gideon watched the absurd drying and powdering process with gravity and
interest, as if trying to discover its charm.

'Even Katherine enjoys it,' he said, still pondering. It was true.
Katherine, who liked experimenting with chemicals, liked also washing
babies. Possibly Katherine knew why, in both cases.

After Charles was in bed, his mother, his aunt, and his prospective
stepfather had dinner. Clare, who was uncomfortable with Gideon, not
liking him as a brother-in-law or indeed as anything else (besides not
being sure how much Jane had told him about 'that awful night'),
chattered to Jane about things of which she thought Gideon knew
nothing--dances, plays, friends, family and Potters Bar gossip. Gideon
became very silent. He and Clare touched nowhere. Clare flaunted the
family papers in his face and Jane's. Lord Pinkerton was starting a new
one, a weekly, and it promised to sell better than any other weekly on
the market, but far better.

'Dad says the orders have been simply stunning. It's going to be a big
thing. Simple, you know, and yet clever--like all dad's papers. David
says' (David was the naval officer to whom Clare was now betrothed)
'there's _no one_ with such a sense of what people want as dad has. Far
more of it than Northcliffe, David says he has. Because, you know,
Northcliffe sometimes annoys people--look at the line he took about us
helping the Russians to fight each other. And making out in leaders,
David says, that the Government is always wrong just because he doesn't
like it. And drawing attention to the mistakes it makes, wh