g slowly down on
the garden-chair beside her. She looked up at him through the large
round spectacles, that gave her an air as of a fairy godmother in a
play, and nodded. "Everything, thanks! Marjorie has been very good. My
knitting--which I always take about with me, because I think it's only
decent for an old lady to knit, not because I can do it well, for I
can't; to-day's _Western Morning News_ and yesterday's _Times_; and my
writing-pad, if I should take it into my head to write letters, which I
shan't, because, as you know, I think letters are thoroughly vicious.
One of the few signs of grace about the present generation is the
so-called decay of the art of letter-writing."

"Jim would agree with you. He has just had to go in to his lessons; and
he thinks that letters are a lot of rot, anyway!"

"What are you doing to-day, Ishmael?"

"I am thinking of helping with the four-acre. Nicky will soon be down
for the Easter recess, and then I shall be so carefully looked after I
shall not get the chance to overtire myself."

"Nicky has turned out a dear boy, and good son," said Judy kindly.

"Nicky always was a dear boy--even at his most elusive. Jim is more
human than Nicky was at his age, but he hasn't Nicky's charm, that
something of a piskie's changeling that made Nicky so attractive. Yes,
he's a 'good son,' to use your horrible expression, Judy. And Marjorie
is a very good wife for him, though I must say I enjoy it when I can
have the two boys, the big and the little one, to myself."

"I sometimes wonder how much you ever really liked women," said Judy.

"I have always liked them, as you call it, very much indeed. But I don't
think I've ever thought of them as women first and foremost, but as
human beings more or less like unto myself."

"That's where you've made your mistake. Not because they aren't--for
they are--but because that destroys the mystery, and no one is keener on
keeping up the idea that women are mysterious creatures, unlike men,
than women themselves."

"I daresay you're right. But to look at, merely externally, I've always
been able to get the mystery. They can look so that a man is afraid to
touch such exquisite, ethereal creatures, all the time that they're
wanting to be touched most. Georgie always used to say I never
understood women."

"When she meant that you showed your understanding too clearly. Dear
Georgie!"

"Yes, dear Georgie! It does seem rough luck that she should have gon