. She's got so much else to do."

"Fiddlesticks. You don't encourage her in such nonsense, I hope,
Neville."

"I? It's not for me to encourage Nan in anything. She doesn't need it.
But as to marriage--yes, I think I wish she would do it, sometime,
whenever she's ready. It would give her something she hasn't got;
emotional steadiness, perhaps I mean. She squanders a bit, now. On the
other hand, her writing would rather go to the wall; if she went on with
it it would be against odds all the time."

"What's writing?" enquired Mrs. Hilary, with a snap of her finger and
thumb. "_Writing!_"

As this seemed too vague or too large a question for Neville to answer,
she did not try to do so, and Mrs. Hilary replied to it herself.

"Mere showing off," she explained it. "Throwing your paltry ideas at a
world which doesn't want them. Writing like Nan's I mean. It's not as if
she wrote really good books."

"Oh well. Who does that, after all? And what is a good book?" Here were
two questions which Mrs. Hilary, in her turn, could not answer. Because
most of the books which seemed good to her did not, as she well knew,
seem good to Neville, or to any of her children, and she wasn't going to
give herself away. She murmured something about Thackeray and Dickens,
which Neville let pass.

"Writing's just a thing to do, as I see it," Neville went on. "A job,
like another. One must _have_ a job, you know. Not for the money, but for
the job's sake. And Nan enjoys it. But I daresay she'd enjoy marriage
too."

"Does she love this man?"

"I don't know. I shouldn't be surprised. She hasn't told me so."

"Probably she doesn't, as he's single. Nan's so perverse. She will love
the wrong men, always."

"You shouldn't believe all Rosalind tells you, mother. Rosalind has a too
vivid fancy and a scandalous tongue."

Mrs. Hilary coloured a little. She did not like Neville to think that she
had been letting Rosalind gossip to her about Nan.

"You know perfectly well, Neville, that I never trust a word Rosalind
says. I suppose I needn't rely on my daughter-in-law for news about my
own daughter's affairs. I can see things for myself. You can't deny that
Nan _has_ had compromising affairs with married men."

"Compromising." Neville turned over the word, thoughtfully and
fastidiously. "Funny word, mother. I'm not sure I know what it means.
But I don't think anything ever compromises Nan; she's too free for
that.... Well, let's marry her off t