Dangerous Ages

owing to a fine day, her unstable temperament, letters, presents and being made a fuss of. Also Grandmama said, when she went up to see her after breakfast, "This

children arrived, Mrs.

how soon she herself would be smouldering with irritation; Gilbert, spare and cynical, writer of plays and literary editor of the Weekly Critic, and with him his wife Rosalind, whom Mrs. Hilary had long since judged as a voluptuous rake who led men on and made up unseemly stories and her lovely face, but who insisted on coming to The Gulls with Gilbert t

t, for she could only rarely and with difficulty see more than one idea in anything, particularly when it was a disgusting one. Her mind was of that sort-tenacious, intolerant, and not many-sided. That was where (partly where) she fell foul of her children, who saw sharply and clearly all around things and gave to each side its value. They knew Mrs. Hilar

a loathsome and indecent vulgarian. It comes from being a German, no doubt." Which settled that; and if anyone murmured "An Austrian," she would s

wheeled chair, Tchekov's Letters on her knees. She had made Mrs. Hilary get this book from Mudie's because she ha

," said Gilbert,

ad learnt that intelligent persons seldom liked the books which seemed to her to be about real, natural people, any more than they admired the pictures which struck her as being like things as they were. Though she thought those who differed from her profoundly wrong, she never admitted ignorance of the books they admired. For she was in a better position to differ from them about a book if she had nominally read it-and really it didn't matter if she had actually done so or not, for she knew

ilbert, Grandmama and Neville to talk about it together, and herself began tellin

children, so that you always knew which she meant. "He never misses to-day if he can possibly help it. But he simply couldn't get away.... One o

Rosalind, stretching her large, lazy limbs in the s

usting his glasses, observed its circumstances

ked. "The Army calli

ce, when I was eleven. It was one of my first thrills. I felt I was blacker in guilt than all crea

ng Rosalind at the age of eleven. "They have meetings on t

nd on the arm of her chair to the merr

od!

f blood

of bloo

e sinner ha

ge into th

n! C

nd be

nd black as a s

at sea shall ma

isagreeable way of worshipping God." She was addicted to

" said Grandmama, "though the w

mance. If we don't restrain her, Ro

lind's vitality, whi

ting "General Booth enters into heaven," by Mr. Va

re interesting if it had been written by Mr. Lytton Strachey instead of Mr. Begbie; he has a better touch on our great religious leaders. Your grandfather," added G

oal the Lord. What more does he want? Clergymen are so

efore flag days. She had decided, after this brief trial, that incense and confessions, though immensely st