“I went into grandfather’s room yesterday, and stayed while he was dictating to the little model.  I do think grandfather’s so splendid.  Martin says an enthusiast is worse than useless; people, he says, can’t afford to dabble in ideas or dreams.  He calls grandfather’s idea paleolithic.  I hate him to be laughed at.  Martin’s so cocksure.  I don’t think he’d find many men of eighty who’d bathe in the Serpentine all the year round, and do his own room, cook his own food, and live on about ninety pounds a year out of his pension of three hundred, and give all the rest away.  Martin says that’s unsound, and the ’Book of Universal Brotherhood’ rot.  I don’t care if it is; it’s fine to go on writing it as he does all day.  Martin admits that.  That’s the worst of him:  he’s so cool, you can’t score him off; he seems to be always criticising you; it makes me wild....  That little model is a hopeless duffer.  I could have taken it all down in half the time.  She kept stopping and looking up with that mouth of hers half open, as if she had all day before her.  Grandfather’s so absorbed he doesn’t notice; he likes to read the thing over and over, to hear how the words sound.  That girl would be no good at any sort of work, except ‘sitting,’ I suppose.  Aunt B. used to say she sat well.  There’s something queer about her face; it reminds me a little of that Botticelli Madonna in the National Gallery, the full-face one; not so much in the shape as in the expression—­almost stupid, and yet as if things were going to happen to her.  Her hands and arms are pretty, and her feet are smaller than mine.  She’s two years older than me.  I asked her why she went in for being a model, which is beastly work.  She said she was glad to get anything!  I asked her why she didn’t go into a shop or into service.  She didn’t answer at once, and then said she hadn’t had any recommendations—­didn’t know where to try; then, all of a sudden, she grew quite sulky, and said she didn’t want to....”

Thyme paused to pencil in a sketch of the little model’s profile....

“She had on a really pretty frock, quite simple and well made—­it must have cost three or four pounds.  She can’t be so very badly off, or somebody gave it her....”

And again Thyme paused.

“She looked ever so much prettier in it than she used to in her old brown skirt, I thought ....  Uncle Hilary came to dinner last night.  We talked of social questions; we always discuss things when he comes.  I can’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