here to cool my jaded nerves. And also because Rosalind wanted to lunch
with me."

"Have you read my poems yet?" enquired Gerda, who never showed the
customary abashed hesitation in dealing with these matters. She and Kay
sent their literary efforts to Nan to criticise, because they believed
(a) in her powers as a critic, (b) in her influence in the literary
world. Nan used in their behalf the former but seldom the latter,
because, in spite of queer spasms of generosity, she was jealous of Gerda
and Kay. Why should they want to write? Why shouldn't they do anything
else in the world but trespass on her preserves? Not that verse was what
she ever wrote or could write herself. And of course everyone wrote now,
and especially the very young; but in a niece and nephew it was a
tiresome trick. They didn't write well, because no one of their age ever
does, but they might some day. They already came out in weekly papers and
anthologies of contemporary verse. Very soon they would come out in
little volumes. They'd much better, thought Nan, marry and get out of the
way.

"Read them--yes," Nan returned laconically to Gerda's question.

"What," enquired Gerda, perseveringly, "did you think of them?"

"I said I'd _read_ them," Nan replied. "I didn't say I'd thought of
them."

Gerda looked at her with her wide, candid gaze, with the unrancorous
placidity of the young, who are still used to being snubbed. Nan, she
knew, would tease and baffle, withhold and gibe, but would always say
what she thought in the end, and what she thought was always worth
knowing, even though she was middle-aged.

Nan, turning her lithe body over on the grass, caught the patient child's
look, and laughed. Generous impulses alternated in her with malicious
moods where these absurd, solemn, egotistic, pretty children of Neville's
were concerned.

"All right, Blue Eyes. I'll write it all down for you and send it to you
with the MS., if you really want it. You won't like it, you know, but I
suppose you're used to that by now."

Neville listened to them. Regret turned in her, cold and tired and
envious. They all wrote except her. To write: it wasn't much of a thing
to do, unless one did it really well, and it had never attracted her
personally, but it was, nevertheless, something--a little piece of
individual output thrown into the flowing river. She had never written,
even when she was Gerda's age. Twenty years ago writing poetry hadn't
been as it is