"Too delicious!" she said. "Nadine darling, do marry Hugh before you are twenty-two. Nowadays if girls don't marry before that they take a flat or something and read at the British Museum till they are thirty and have got spectacles, without even getting compromised--"

"Compromised? Of course not," cried Nadine. "You can't get compromised now. There is no such thing as compromise. We die in the ditch sooner, like poor Lord Halsbury. Being compromised was purely a Victorian sort of decoration like--like crinolines. Oh, do tell us about those delicious Victorian days about 1890 when you were a girl and people thought you fast and were shocked."

"My dear, you wouldn't believe it," said Dodo; "you would think I was describing what happened in Noah's Ark. Bertie and Tommy, for instance, would never have been allowed to come and lie on your bed."

"Oh, why not?" asked Esther.

"Because you and Nadine are girls and they are boys. That sounds simple nonsense, doesn't it? Also because to a certain extent boys and girls then did as older people told them to, and older people would have told them to go away. You see we used to listen to older people because they were older; now you don't listen to them, for identically the same reason. We thought they were bores and obeyed them; you are perfectly sweet to them, but they have learned never to tell you to do anything.

You would never do what I told you, dear, unless you wanted to."

"No, Mama, I suppose not. But I always do what you tell me, as it is, because you always tell me to do exactly what I want to."

Dodo laughed.

"Yes, that is just what education means now. And how nicely we get along. n.o.body is shocked now, in consequence, which is much better for them. You can die of shock, so doctors say, without any other injury at all. So it is clearly wise not to be shocked. I was shocked once, when I was eight years old, because I was taken to the dentist without being told. I was told that I was to go for an ordinary walk with my sister Maud. And then, before I knew where I was, there was my mouth open as far as my uvula, and a dreadful man with a mirror and pincers was looking at my teeth. I lost my trust in human honor, which I have since then regained. I think Maud was more shocked than me. I think it conduced to her death. You didn't remember Auntie Maud, Nadine, did you?

You were so little and she was so unrememberable. Yes; a quant.i.ty of worsted work. But that's why I always want the bishop to come whenever he can."

"I don't see why, even now," said Nadine.

"Darling, aren't you rather slow? Bishop Spenser, you know, who was Auntie Maud's husband. Surely you've heard me call him Algie. Who ever called a bishop by his Christian name unless he was a relation? Maud knew him when he was a curate. She fluffed herself up in him, just as she used to do in her worsted, and n.o.body ever saw her any more. But I loved Maud, and I don't think she ever knew it. Some people don't know you love them unless you tell them so, and it is so silly to tell your sister that you love her. I never say I love you, either, and I don't say I love Esther, and that silly Berts, and serious Tommy. But what's the use of you all unless you know it? Nadine, ring the bell, please. It all looks as if we were going to talk, and I had no dinner to speak of, because I was being anxious about Daddy. I thought he was going to talk Hungarian; he looked as if he was, and so I got anxious, because he only talks Hungarian when he is what people call very much on. Certainly he wasn't off to-night; he is off to-morrow. And so I want food. If I am being anxious I want food immediately afterwards, as soon as the anxiety is removed. At least I suppose Daddy has gone to bed. You haven't got him here, have you? Fancy me being as old as any two of you. You are all so delightful, that you mustn't put me on the shelf yet. But just think!

I was nice the other day to Berts' sister, and she told her mother she had got a new friend, who was quite old. 'Not so old as Grannie,' she said, 'but quite old!' And all the time I thought we were being girls together. At least I thought I was; I thought she was rather middle-aged. How is your mother, Berts? She doesn't approve of me, but I hope she is quite well."

Bertie also was a nephew by affection.

"Aunt Dodo," he said, "I think mother is too silly for anything."

"I knew something was coming," said Dodo; "what's she done now?"

"Well, it is. She said she thought you were heartless."

"Silly a.s.s," said Esther. "Go on, Berts."

Berts felt goaded.

"Of course mother is a silly a.s.s," he said. "It's no use telling me that. Your mother is a silly a.s.s, too, with her coronets and all that sort of fudge. But altogether there is very little to be said for people over forty, except Aunt Dodo."

"Beloved Berts," remarked Dodo. "Go on about Edith."

"But it is so. They're all antiques except you, battered antiques. Let's talk about mothers generally. Look at Esther's mother. She doesn't want me to marry Esther because my father is only an ordinary Mister. There's a reason! And I don't want to marry Esther because her mother is a marchioness. After all, mine has done more than hers, who never did anything except cut William the Conqueror when he came over, and tell him he was of very poor, new family. But my mother wrote the 'Dods Symphony' for instance. She's something; she was Edith Staines, and when she has her songs sung at the Queen's Hall, she goes and conducts them."

"Bertie, in a short skirt and boots with enormous nails," said Esther.

"And why not? She may be a silly a.s.s in some things, but she's done something."

Bertie uncoiled all his yards of height and stood up.

"You began," he said. "I'm only answering you back. Lady Ayr has never done anything at all except talk about her family. She doesn't think about anything but family: she's the most antiquated and absurd type of sn.o.b there is. And your ridiculous brother John is exactly the same.

You're the most awful family, and make one long for grocers, like Nadine."

"Darling, what do you want a grocer for?" asked Dodo.

But Berts had not finished yet.

"And as for your brother Seymour, all that can be said about him is that he is a perfect lady," he said, "but he ought to have been drowned when he was a girl, like a kitten."

Esther shouted with laughter.

"Oh, Berts, I wish you would be roused oftener," she said; "I absolutely adore you when you are roused. But you aren't quite right about Seymour.

He isn't a lady any more than he's a gentleman. And after all he has got a brain, a real brain."

"Well, it takes all sorts to make a world," said Dodo, "and, Esther dear, I'm often extremely grateful to Seymour. He will always come to dinner at the very last moment--"

"That's because n.o.body else ever asks him," said Bertie, still fizzing and spouting a little. "That's one of the objections to marrying you, Esther, you will always be letting him come to dinner."

"Be quiet, Berts. As I say, he never minds how late he is asked, and he invariably makes himself charming to the oldest and plainest woman present. Here, for instance, he would be making himself pleasant to me."

"Poor chap!" said Berts, lighting another cigarette, and lying down again.

A tray with some cold ham, a plate of strawberries, and a small jug of iced lemonade which had been ordered by Nadine for her mother was here brought in by a perfectly impa.s.sive footman, and placed on the bed between her and Nadine. No servants in Dodo's house ever felt the smallest surprise at anything which was demanded of them, and if Nadine had at this moment asked him to wash her face, he would probably have merely said, "Hot or cold water, miss?"

Nadine had not contributed anything to this discussion on Seymour, because she was almost inconveniently aware that she did not know what she thought about him. Certainly he had brains, and for brains she had an enormous respect.

"Seeing things to eat always makes me feel hungry," said Nadine, absently taking strawberries, "just as the sight of a bed makes me very wide-awake. It is called suggestion. Really the chief use of going to bed is that you are alone and have time to think."

"And that is so exhausting that I instantly go to sleep," remarked Tommy.

"You get--how do you call it--into training, if you practise, Tommy,"

said Nadine. "People imagine that because they have a brain they can think. It isn't so: you have to learn to think. You have a tongue, but you must learn to talk: you have arms and yet you must learn how to play your foolish golf."

"You don't learn it, darling," said Dodo.

"Mama, you are eating ham and have not been following. Really it is so.

Most people can't think. Esther can't: she confesses it."

"It's quite true," said Esther. "I felt full of ideas this morning, and so I went away all alone along the beach to think them out. But I couldn't. There were my ideas all right, and that was all. I couldn't think about them. There they were, ideas: just that, framed and glazed."

Tommy rose.

"I'm worse than that," he said. "I never have any ideas. In some ways it's an advantage, because if we all had ideas, I suppose we should want to express them. As it is I am at leisure to listen."

Dodo took a long draught of lemonade.

"I have one idea," she said, "and that is that it's bed-time. I shall go and exhaust myself with thought. The process of exhaustion does not take long. Besides, if I sit up much later than twelve, my maid always pulls my hair, and whips my head with the brush instead of treating me kindly."

"I should dismiss her," said Nadine.

"I couldn't, dear. She is so imbecile that she would never get another situation. Ah, there's Hugh! Hugh, did poor Algie Balearic-isles beat you?"

A very large young man had just appeared in the doorway. He held in his hand a sandwich out of which he had just taken an enormous semi-circular bite. The rest of it was in his mouth, and he spoke with the mumbling utterance necessary to those who converse when their mouths are quite full.