, she grew quite sulky, and said she didn't
want to...."

Thyme paused to pencil in a sketch of the little model's profile....

"She had on a really pretty frock, quite simple and well made--it must
have cost three or four pounds. She can't be so very badly off, or
somebody gave it her...."

And again Thyme paused.

"She looked ever so much prettier in it than she used to in her old brown
skirt, I thought .... Uncle Hilary came to dinner last night. We talked
of social questions; we always discuss things when he comes. I can't
help liking Uncle Hilary; he has such kind eyes, and he's so gentle that
you never lose your temper with him. Martin calls him weak and
unsatisfactory because he's not in touch with life. I should say it was
more as if he couldn't bear to force anyone to do anything; he seems to
see both sides of every question, and he's not good at making up his
mind, of course. He's rather like Hamlet might have been, only nobody
seems to know now what Hamlet was really like. I told him what I thought
about the lower classes. One can talk to him. I hate father's way of
making feeble little jokes, as if nothing were serious. I said I didn't
think it was any use to dabble; we ought to go to the root of everything.
I said that money and class distinctions are two bogeys we have got to
lay. Martin says, when it comes to real dealing with social questions
and the poor, all the people we know are amateurs. He says that we have
got to shake ourselves free of all the old sentimental notions, and just
work at putting everything to the test of Health. Father calls Martin a
'Sanitist'; and Uncle Hilary says that if you wash people by law they'll
all be as dirty again tomorrow...."

Thyme paused again. A blackbird in the garden of the Square was uttering
a long, low, chuckling trill. She ran to the window and peeped out. The
bird was on a plane-tree, and, with throat uplifted, was letting through
his yellow beak that delicious piece of self-expression. All things he
seemed to praise--the sky, the sun, the trees, the dewy grass, himself:

'You darling!' thought Thyme. With a shudder of delight she dropped her
notebook back into the drawer, flung off her nightgown, and flew into her
bath.

That same morning she slipped out quietly at ten o'clock. Her Saturdays
were free of classes, but she had to run the gauntlet of her mother's
liking for her company and her father's wish for her to go with him to