How absurdly her voice rang when she spoke of Neville or Jim!  It always made Rosalind’s lip curl mockingly.

“Wonderful creature!  I do admire her.  When I’m her age I shall be too fat to take any exercise at all.  I think it’s splendid of women who keep it up through the forties.... She won’t be bored, even when she’s sixty, will she?”

That was a direct hit, which Mrs. Hilary could bear better than hits at Neville.

“I see no reason,” said Mrs. Hilary, “why Neville should ever be bored.  She has a husband and children.  Long before she is sixty she will have Kay’s and Gerda’s children to be interested in.”

“No, I suppose one can’t well be bored if one has grandchildren, can one,” Rosalind said, reflectively.

There was a silence, during which Mrs. Hilary’s eyes, coldly meeting Rosalind’s with their satirical comment, said “I know you are too selfish a woman ever to bear children, and I thank God for it.  Little Hilarys who should be half yours would be more than I could endure.”

Rosalind, quite understanding, smiled her slow, full-mouthed, curling smile, and held out to her mother-in-law the gold case with scented cigarettes.

“Oh no, you don’t, do you.  I never can remember that.  It’s so unusual.”

Her eyes travelled over Mrs. Hilary, from her dusty black shoes to her pale, lined face.  They put her, with deliberation, into the class with companions, house-keepers, poor relations.  Having successfully done that (she knew it was successful, by Mrs. Hilary’s faint flush) she said “You don’t look up to much, mother dear.  Not as if Neville had been looking after you very well.”

Mrs. Hilary, seeing her chance, swallowed her natural feelings and took it.

“The fact is, I sleep very badly.  Not particularly just now, but always....  I thought....  That is, someone told me ... that there have been wonderful cures for insomnia lately ... through that new thing....”

“Which new thing?  Sedobrol?  Paraldehyd?  Gilbert keeps getting absurd powders and tablets of all sorts.  Thank God, I always sleep like a top.”

“No, not those.  The thing you practice.  Psycho-analysis, I mean.”

“Oh, psycho.  But you wouldn’t touch that, surely?  I thought it was anathema.”

“But if it really does cure people....”

Rosalind’s eyes glittered and gleamed.  Her strawberry-red mouth curled joyfully.

“Of course it has....  Not that insomnia is always a case for psycho, you know.  It’s sometimes incipient mania.”

“Not in my case.”  Mrs. Hilary spoke sharply.

“Why no, of course not....  Well, I think you’d be awfully wise to get analysed.  Whom do you want to go to?”

“I thought you could tell me.  I know no names....  A man,” Mrs. Hilary added quickly.