about reading, and cleverness--how tedious it was! As if being stupid
mattered, as if it was worth bothering about.

"Of course we don't think you a fool, mother dear; how could we?"

Jim was kind and affectionate, never ironic, like Gilbert, or impatient,
like Nan. But he felt now the need for fresh air; the arbour was too
small for him and Mrs. Hilary, who was as tiring to others as to herself.

"I think I shall go and interrupt Neville over her studies," said Jim,
and left the arbour.

Mrs. Hilary looked after him, painfully loving his square, straight back,
his fine dark head, just flecked with grey, the clean line of his
profile, with the firm jaw clenched over the pipe. To have produced
Jim--wasn't that enough to have lived for? Mrs. Hilary was one of those
mothers who apply the Magnificat to their own cases. She always felt a
bond of human sympathy between herself and that lady called the Virgin
Mary, whom she thought over-estimated.

3

Neville raised heavy violet eyes, faintly ringed with shadows, to Jim as
he came into the library. She looked at him for a moment absently, then
smiled. He came over to her and looked at the book before her.

"Working? Where've you got to? Let's see how much you know."

He took the book from her and glanced at it to see what she had been
reading.

"Now we'll have an examination; it'll be good practice for you."

He put a question, and she answered it, frowning a little.

"H'm. That's not very good, my dear."

He tried again; this time she could not answer at all. At the third
question she shook her head.

"It's no use, Jimmy. My head's hopeless this afternoon. Another time."

He shut the book.

"Yes. So it seems.... You're overdoing it, Neville. You can't go on like
this."

She lay back and spread out her hands hopelessly.

"But I must go on like this if I'm ever going to get through my exams."

"You're not going to, old thing. You're quite obviously unfitted to. It's
not your job any more. It's absurd to try; really it is."

Neville shut her eyes.

"Doctors ... doctors. They have it on the brain,--the limitations of the
feminine organism."

"Because they know something about it. But I'm not speaking of the
feminine organism just now. I should say the same to Rodney if _he_
thought of turning doctor now, after twenty years of politics."

"Rodney never could have been a doctor. He hates messing about with
bodies."

"Well, you know what I think. I c