rd-working,
rather ambitious solicitor or man of business with a family to bring up
and a certain position to maintain. And then, of course, the daughters
have to give way to the sons; the sons have to be educated; they have to
bully and shove for their wives and families, and so it all comes over
again. And meanwhile there are the women in the background. . . . Do you
really think that the vote will do you any good?"

"The vote?" Rachel repeated. She had to visualise it as a little bit of
paper which she dropped into a box before she understood his question,
and looking at each other they smiled at something absurd in the
question.

"Not to me," she said. "But I play the piano. . . . Are men really like
that?" she asked, returning to the question that interested her. "I'm
not afraid of you." She looked at him easily.

"Oh, I'm different," Hewet replied. "I've got between six and seven
hundred a year of my own. And then no one takes a novelist seriously,
thank heavens. There's no doubt it helps to make up for the drudgery of
a profession if a man's taken very, very seriously by every one--if
he gets appointments, and has offices and a title, and lots of letters
after his name, and bits of ribbon and degrees. I don't grudge it 'em,
though sometimes it comes over me--what an amazing concoction! What a
miracle the masculine conception of life is--judges, civil servants,
army, navy, Houses of Parliament, lord mayors--what a world we've made
of it! Look at Hirst now. I assure you," he said, "not a day's passed
since we came here without a discussion as to whether he's to stay on at
Cambridge or to go to the Bar. It's his career--his sacred career. And
if I've heard it twenty times, I'm sure his mother and sister have heard
it five hundred times. Can't you imagine the family conclaves, and the
sister told to run out and feed the rabbits because St. John must have
the school-room to himself--'St. John's working,' 'St. John wants his
tea brought to him.' Don't you know the kind of thing? No wonder that
St. John thinks it a matter of considerable importance. It is too.
He has to earn his living. But St. John's sister--" Hewet puffed in
silence. "No one takes her seriously, poor dear. She feeds the rabbits."

"Yes," said Rachel. "I've fed rabbits for twenty-four years; it seems
odd now." She looked meditative, and Hewet, who had been talking much at
random and instinctively adopting the feminine point of view, saw that
she wo