“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 impossibilities.  You can receive a sacrament, and you can find salvation, but you can’t live the sermon on the mount.  So of course it makes people discontented.”

Grandmama, who often in the evenings became a fluent though drowsy talker, might have wandered on like this till her bed-time, had not Mrs. Hilary here appeared, in her dressing-gown.  She sat down, and said, trying to sound natural and not annoyed and failing.  “I heard so much talk, I thought I would come down and be in it.  I thought you were coming up to me again directly, Neville.  I hadn’t realised you meant to stay down and talk to Grandmama instead.”

She hated Neville or any of them, but especially Neville, to talk intimately to Grandmama; it made her jealous.  She tried and tried not to feel this, but it was never any use her fighting against jealousy, it was too strong for her.

Grandmama said placidly, “Neville and I were discussing different forms of religion.”

“Is Neville thinking of adopting one of them?” Mrs. Hilary enquired, her jealousy making her sound sarcastic and scornful.

“No, mother.  Not at present....  Come back to bed, and I’ll sit with you, and we’ll talk.  I don’t believe you should be up.”