'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
Richmond and play golf.

For on Saturdays Stephen almost always left the precincts of the Courts
before three o'clock. Then, if he could induce his wife or daughter to
accompany him, he liked to get a round or two in preparation for Sunday,
when he always started off at half-past ten and played all day. If
Cecilia and Thyme failed him, he would go to his club, and keep himself
in touch with every kind of social movement by reading the reviews.

Thyme walked along with her head up and a wrinkle in her brow, as though
she were absorbed in serious re