at; (Philip amused himself by imagining who they were and
weaving little stories about them; he had got into the habit of answering
Mildred's remarks with his mouth only so that his thoughts remained
undisturbed;) but the afternoons were long and dreary. They sat on the
beach. Mildred said they must get all the benefit they could out of Doctor
Brighton, and he could not read because Mildred made observations
frequently about things in general. If he paid no attention she
complained.

"Oh, leave that silly old book alone. It can't be good for you always
reading. You'll addle your brain, that's what you'll do, Philip."

"Oh, rot!" he answered.

"Besides, it's so unsociable."

He discovered that it was difficult to talk to her. She had not even the
power of attending to what she was herself saying, so that a dog running
in front of her or the passing of a man in a loud blazer would call forth
a remark and then she would forget what she had been speaking of. She had
a bad memory for names, and it irritated her not to be able to think of
them, so that she would pause in the middle of some story to rack her
brains. Sometimes she had to give it up, but it often occurred to her
afterwards, and when Philip was talking of something she would interrupt
him.

"Collins, that was it. I knew it would come back to me some time. Collins,
that's the name I couldn't remember."

It exasperated him because it showed that she was not listening to
anything he said, and yet, if he was silent, she reproached him for
sulkiness. Her mind was of an order that could not deal for five minutes
with the abstract, and when Philip gave way to his taste for generalising
she very quickly showed that she was bored. Mildred dreamt a great deal,
and she had an accurate memory for her dreams, which she would relate
every day with prolixity.

One morning he received a long letter from Thorpe Athelny. He was taking
his holiday in the theatrical way, in which there was much sound sense,
which characterised him. He had done the same thing for ten years. He took
his whole family to a hop-field in Kent, not far from Mrs. Athelny's home,
and they spent three weeks hopping. It kept them in the open air, earned
them money, much to Mrs. Athelny's satisfaction, and renewed their contact
with mother earth. It was upon this that Athelny laid stress. The sojourn
in the fields gave them a new strength; it was like a magic ceremony, by
which they renewed their youth