to John. If John and Henry wanted to get to each other,
they had to pass by Brodrick's house.

Moor Grange was a half-way house, the great meeting-place of all the
Brodricks.

One fine warm Sunday in mid-May, about four o'clock, all the Brodricks
except Hugh were assembled on Hugh's lawn. There was Mr. John Brodrick,
the eldest brother, the head of the firm of Brodrick and Brodrick,
Electrical Engineers. There was Dr. Henry Brodrick, who came next to
John. He had brought Mrs. Heron, their sister (Mrs. Heron lived with
Henry, because Mr. Heron had run away with the governess, to the
unspeakable scandal of the Brodricks). There was Mrs. Louis Levine, who
came next to Mrs. Heron. There was Mrs. John Brodrick, not to be
separated from her husband, who, in a decorous dumbness and secrecy,
adored her; and Mr. Louis Levine, who owed his position among the
Brodricks to the very properly apparent devotion of his wife.

And there were children about. Eddy and Winny Heron, restless,
irrepressible in their young teens, sprawled at their mother's feet and
hung over her in attitudes of affection. One very small Levine trotted
to and fro on fat legs over the lawn. The other, too small to run, could
be seen in the background, standing in Gertrude Collett's lap and
trampling on her.

The Levines had come over from St. John's Wood, packed tight in their
commodious brand-new motor-car, the symbol of Levine's prosperity. So
that all Brodrick's family were at Putney this afternoon.

They were sitting in the delicate shadow of the lime-tree. Outside, the
lawn was drenched with light, light that ran quivering into the little
inlets and pools among the shadows. The cropped grass shone clear as
emerald, and all the garden showed clear-cut and solid and stable in its
propriety and order.

Still more distinct, more stable and more solid, more ineradicably fixed
in order and propriety, were the four figures of the Brodricks. Sitting
there, in a light that refused, in spite of the lime-tree, to lend
itself to any mystery or enchantment, they maintained themselves in a
positively formidable reality. All these Brodricks had firm,
thick-skinned faces in which lines came slowly, and were few but strong.
Faces, they were, of men who have lived in absolute sobriety and sanity,
untorn by any temptation to live otherwise; faces of women to whom
motherhood has brought the ultimate content.

Comfortably material persons, sitting in a deep peace, not