ugh I've had to drop most of it now of course.
But now I'm so near the end that it doesn't matter. You can drop work at
eighty and keep calm and interested in life. You can't at sixty; it's
too young.... Mother knows that too, but there seems no work she can do.
She doesn't care for parish work as I do; she never learnt any art or
craft or handiwork, and doesn't want to; she was never much good at
intellectual work of any kind, and what mind she had as a girl--and her
father and I did try to train her to use it--ran all to seed during her
married life, so it's pretty nearly useless now. She spent herself on
your father and all you children, and now she's bankrupt."

"Poor darling mother," Neville murmured.

Grandmama nodded. "Just so. She's left to read novels, gossip with stupid
neighbours, look after me, write to you children, go on walks, and brood
over the past. She would have been quite happy like that forty years ago.
The young have high spirits, and can amuse themselves without work. She
never wanted work when she was eighteen. It's the old who need work.
They've lost their spring and their zest for life, and need something to
hold on to. It's all wrong, the way we arrange it--making the young work
and the old sit idle. It should be the other way about. Girls and boys
don't get bored with perpetual holidays; they live each moment of them
hard; they would welcome the eternal Sabbath; and indeed I trust we shall
all do that, as our youth is to be renewed like eagles. But old age on
this earth is far too sad to do nothing in. Remember that, child, when
your time comes."

"Why, yes. But when one's married, you know, it's not so easy, keeping up
with a job. I only wish I could.... I don't _like_ being merely a married
woman. Rodney isn't merely a married man, after all.... But anyhow I'll
find something to amuse my old age, even if I can't work. I'll play
patience or croquet or the piano, or all three, and I'll go to theatres
and picture shows and concerts and meetings in the Albert Hall. Mother
doesn't do any of those things. And she _is_ so unhappy so often."

"Oh very. Very unhappy. Very often.... She should come to church
more. This Unitarianism is depressing. No substance in it. I'd rather
be a Papist and keep God in a box. Or belong to the Army and sing
about rivers of blood. I daresay both are satisfying. All this
sermon-on-the-mount-but-no-miracle business is most saddening. Because
it's about impossibiliti