eature, very proper, very dull--in a
gentle fashion, appallingly obstinate. She and Miggles together are as
good as a play. You'll hear. They'll get entangled in a dual
conversation, and all I ask is--don't look at me! Mrs Rendall would
never forgive me if I laughed. She's a trying little person, and Piers
is sweet to her; never loses his patience. He deserves a halo for
that."

Vanna raised protesting eyebrows.

"Well, I hardly knew my parents, but I have realised the want of them so
badly all my life that I can't screw myself up to an access of
admiration for a son who is decently polite to his mother. Suppose she
does try his patience at times--that's inevitable, I should say, between
a young man and an old woman--how many times has she borne and forborne
with him; what mountains of patience has she expended on his training?
It's not a virtue, it's mere common decency that he should be kind to
her now. He would be despicable if he failed."

"Quite true, every word true. You are theorising, dear, and there's not
an argument against you. But leave theories alone for a moment and look
at facts. How many parents and children--grown-up children--do you find
who live together in sympathy and understanding? Precious few.
Sometimes there's an open feud; that's rare, and can't go on in the
nature of things; sometimes there's an armed truce; sometimes there are
successions of jars; almost always there's a gulf. They see with
different eyes, and hear with different ears, and each side thinks the
other blind and deaf. One side lacks sympathy, the other imagination.
It seems the most difficult thing in the world to `put yourself in his
place.'"

"I don't know. If I'd had my own mother, it seems to me we would have
been _friends_. It wouldn't have needed a great exercise of sympathy to
realise that she was old and tired, tired with looking after _me_; and
if I had made a friend of her and talked to her, and--_told_ her things,
she would have sympathised with me in return. I _know_ she would. I
feel it!"

"Did you, `tell things' to Aunt Mary?"

"No, of course not. That was different."

"Ah, you think so; but it is not. It's the generation that's the bar,
not the person," cried Jean with one of her quick flashes of intuition.
"Youth wants youth and looks for it, and finds it easier to confide in a
girl after a week's acquaintance than in her very own mother, I've seen
it not once, but dozens of times. I